Competing on home snow Hirscher, winner of the overall World Cup title seven times and who leads again this season, was the strong favourite, but a relatively poor first run left him with too much to do and he finished in second.

The 21-year-old Noel picked up only the second World Cup win of his career with an overall time of 1min 45.53sec on the Ganslernhang piste.

Going into his second run, he sat in second place behind only Switzerland’s Ramon Zenhaeusern but, while the Swiss then faltered, Noel put in a strong second run of 50.19sec to claim the victory.

Hirscher, 29, managed the fastest second run of the entire field at 49.72 but, after a poor first run had placed him ninth, the two-time Olympic champion could not make up the difference.

Noel’s victory means he now sits second in the overall slalom World Cup standings after eight events on 401 points, though he is still 175 behind Hirscher.

Across the border Germany, a FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup women’s super-G contest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was won by Austria’s Nicole Schmidhofer.

The 2017 world champion gained her third World Cup win of the season and her first in super-G, with a time of 1:19.98.

That saw her finish 0.23 seconds ahead of Italy’s 2018 downhill Olympic champion Sofia Goggia, while Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami finished third.

Schmidhofer’s win sees her into third in the World Cup super-G standings on 253 points.

The United States' Mikhaela Shiffrin remains top on 300 points despite not taking part today.

Tomorrow action in both resorts is due continue,with a men’s super-G event in Kitzbuehel and a women’s downhill in Garmisch.