The skier from the United States topped the podium at the German resort after clocking a time of 1min 53.71, securing his first World Cup success since winning the same discipline at Santa Caterina, Italy, in December 2014.

On his way down the course, Ganong’s split times were never ahead of the rest until he crossed the finish line.

Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud was pushed into second place by the American as he finished 0.38sec behind while Peter Fill of Italy was third with a time of 1:54.23.

There were a number of crashes during the competition with 11 skiers failing to complete the course.

Among them were Ganong's team-mate Steven Nyman, Canada's Erik Guay, Slovenia's Bostjan Kline and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway.

With 202 points to his name, Jansrud, who won bronze in the men’s downhill at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, did manage to jump ahead of Fill in the downhill World Cup standings, but only has a three point advantage over the Italian.

Third in the discipline’s standings is occupied by Dominik Paris, also of Italy, on 168 after finishing 10^th today, while Gangong’s victory means he is fourth with 147.

In the overall World Cup standings, there was no change to the top three places.

None of the leading trio took part in the downhill with Austria’s Marcel Hirscher ahead with 1,160 points.

Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen is second on 792 and France’s Alexis Pinturault is a further 79 points behind in third.

Another downhill race is due to be held at the resort tomorrow before a giant slalom competition takes place on Sunday (January 29).

Today's race was held following the cancellation of a FIS World Cup leg in Wengen, Switzerland, due to poor weather.