In the first Alpine Snowboard World Cup event to be held in Japan for seven years, Košir finished ahead of Germany's Patrick Bussler and Stanislav Detkov of Russia to clinch the crystal globe for the parallel giant slalom discipline.

Bussler would also have been delighted with his performance as he claimed a podium place for the first time in his career, while Detkov held off a valiant challenge from Italy's Christoph Mick to earn a top-three spot.

But the day belonged to the ever-improving Košir, who took his third World Cup win to ensure he reigned supreme in the tricky parallel giant slalom event.

"Finally I got all parts together," he said.

"As it was the last pgs of the season I was pretty nervous because I came here to win it.

"And I did it."

Julia Dujmovits powered to an impressive victory in the women's event as she beat Switzerland's Julie Zogg and Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic ©Getty Images



While the women's equivalent overall World Cup had already been won by Austria's Marion Kreiner, the race in Asahikawa still provided the enthusiastic crowd with bags of entertainment as fellow Austrian Julia Dujmovits powered to a classy victory.

The 27-year-old crossed the line in front of Switzerland's Julie Zogg, and parallel slalom world champion Ester Ledecká came through to take third after she narrowly beat Austria's Claudia Riegler, who herself won parallel giant slalom gold on home snow at the World Championships in Kreischberg last month.

"I didn't had the results in the pgs World Cup I was hoping for," Dujmovits said.

"This is why I did some riding adjustments and also fine tuned my equipment set-up, which finally paid off.

"It was a great race where everything worked out."

The event at the Japanese resort continues tomorrow with the third parallel slalom competition of the season.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
February 2015: World champions reign supreme at FIS Alpine Snowboard World Cup
January 2015: Russian and Austrian claim parallel snowboarding World Cup titles in Slovenia
January 2015: Limbacher claims photo-finish win as FIS Ski and Snowboard World Championships come to dramatic end
January 2015: Austrian veteran seals maiden snowboarding world title on historic day at World Championships
January 2015: Ledecka and Fischnaller take parallel slalom snowboarding world titles