The slalom specialist showed his talent with an unstoppable second run to overtake Austrian Johannes Strolz for first place.

Strolz was aiming to win his second Olympic gold medal of the Games, after winning the Alpine combined, following the success of his father Hubert Strolz in the same event at Calgary 1988.

It was Strolz's slalom leg - after a respectable downhill section - that propelled him to the top of the podium in the event and he showed his quality in the slalom today.

His first run saw him lead the standings in a time of 53.92sec, followed marginally behind by Norwegians Henrik Kristoffersen and Sebastian Foss-Solevåg.

But it was the final run that separated the Frenchman from the rest, making it clean through the second gate and holding his speed all the way to the bottom, finishing in 49.79 for a combined time of 1min 44.09sec.

Noël expressed his happiness for hitting form at the right part of the season after his race.

"I lost a little bit of confidence at the beginning of January and then I skied not so good in training also," he said. 

"I did some good runs in (the) World Cup but I always made mistakes or had trouble in the second runs. 

"It really means a lot to be in my best shape on the most important day of the season." 

Strolz was 0.61 seconds behind, unable to keep the consistency of the first effort and world champion Foss-Solevåg was in a similar position - finishing more than a second behind Noël on the second run, but crucially in front of Kristoffersen for the bronze.

Kristoffersen could not add to his slalom bronze from 2014 and giant slalom silver from 2018.

Loïc Meillard of Switzerland completed the top-five.

Defending overall World Cup champion Alexis Pinturault of France and last year's slalom World Cup champion Marco Schwarz of Austria were 16th and 17th respectively.

Slalom World Cup leader Lucas Braathen of Norway skied out, as did Manuel Feller of Austria and Sweden's Kristofer Jakobsen, who has twice made the World Cup podium in the event this season.