France wins team event at alpine worlds

France beat Slovakia in the team event final to win its first medal at the alpine ski world championships on Tuesday in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

The quartet of Adeline Baud Mugnier, Mathieu Faivre, Alexis Pinturault and Tessa Worley won on a time tiebreaker of 0.08 seconds after each team won two legs of parallel slalom races.

It was a first career gold medal for the French star Pinturault, who previously had two bronzes in giant slalom from the 2014 Olympics and 2015 worlds.

Slovakia's silver medal team was Matej Falat, Veronika Velez Zuzulova, Petra Vlhova and Andreas Zampa.

On Saturday, Zuzulova and Vlhova should be among the medal contenders in slalom, with Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States a strong favourite.

Sweden took bronze, winning 3-1 against a Switzerland team which included Luca Aerni and Wendy Holdener, the gold medallists in individual combined events.

Canada lost in the quarter-finals to Switzerland after defeating the United States in the round of 16.

The Canadian team was made up of Phil Brown, Erik Read, Trevor Philp, Candace Crawford, Erin Mielzynski and Ali Nullmeyer.

Austria was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Sweden, and its star Marcel Hirscher lost his race in both rounds.

The team event will debut on the Olympic program at the Pyeongchang Winter Games next year. It was introduced at the world championships in 2005, and Austria won three of the previous five editions.