"It wasn't easy, the first run wasn't bad, but it wasn't my top performance. I did get an excellent place for the attack in the final run though," Kranjec said.

"I knew my final run wasn't perfect either, but at the same time I knew that other guys didn't have perfect runs either and that they had quite some problems. I managed to win, which is wonderful," he told the press after the event.

In his 68th appearance in the World Cup, Kranjec finished the race 0.19 seconds ahead of Loic Meillard of Switzerland, with the third place going to Mathieu Faivre of France (+0.50s).

The leading competitors after the first run, Swede Matts Olsson and Austrian Manuel Feller, crashed out in the second run, making it easier for Kranjec to win in what was actually his debut appearance in Saalbach.

The previous best for the 26-year-old from Ljubljana was the 3rd place in Italy's Alta Badia last year, which was the first podium finish for a Slovenian male skier in 16 years.

The former junior world champion in the giant slalom from Quebec in 2013 is the second World Cup winner for Slovenia in Saalbach, after Mateja Svet won the women's giant slalom in March 1988.

Kranjec is actually only the second Slovenian to win a World Cup giant slalom race for men. Boris Strel earned the first win back in 1982 in Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Interestingly, Slovenia's best woman skier Ilka Štuhec also won today the super-G in Italy's Val Gardena, which is only the second time in history two Slovenians won a World Cup event on the same day.

This happened for the first time in 2000, when Špela Pretnar won the women's slalom in Aare and Matjaž Vrhovnik won the men's slalom in Adelboden.