On a sloppy course that got the best of nearly everyone else, Jean-Pierre Vidal of France maintained nerves of steel to hold his edge and win the men's Olympic slalom on Saturday as America's America's hopeful skied out.

Vidal carried a .36-second cushion over American Bode Miller into the race's second run and hung on to win as the pre-race favorite lost his form and skied out of the course early in the run. Miller hiked back up to make the gate, but finished more than 11 seconds behind the leader, in 25th place.

Apart from Vidal, six of the top seven finishers in the first run failed to reach the podium.

"It was high speed coming off that flat and it's just really icy and bumpy and I was going fast," said Miller, who won the silver in combined and giant slalom earlier in the Games.

"I was carrying a ton of heat there. It's one of those things where it could have gone either way. I can't tell you how many of those I've had in my career on the downhill and combined. You put yourself in the position (to medal), then it's sort of up to Mother Nature, luck and your equipment. I almost had it, just couldn't quite hold it," Miller said.

France also took 2nd in the event as Sebastien Amiez skied out of the 11th start position to claim the silver. Alain Baxter took the bronze for Great Britain, winning his country's first alpine medal in Olympic history.

"It is fantastic," Vidal said. "For me it's super. I have made a very good run in the first and in the second I know I have a good advantage between Amiez and I just do my run and I know if I finish my run it will be okay. With Miller, I knew he will take all the risks. And that if he is in the finish corral it will be very difficult for me, that I must do the best that I can. But when I knew that he is out, if I just finish the race, it is okay."

Miller went out hard on his second run, unwilling to settle with a safe silver-winning ski. He said he skied hard because ski racing offers no guarantees, even when sitting in 2nd by nearly a one-second lead.

"If I could guarantee myself silver if I backed off, maybe I would have done that, but there's no guarantees," Miller said. "If I back off and come down into fifth place I would have been really disappointed. Yeah, I'm a little disappointed, but I made it down the course. I came out there and I skied hard and I was going for it. I was going for the win."

The U.S.'s top finish was Chip Knight (Stowe, Vt.) in 12th place. The relentless slalom course at Deer Valley took down numerous skiers throughout the day. In the first run, 26 skiers did not finish, and among the top-15 heading into the second, five didn't make it to the bottom.

Men's slalom marks the final alpine event of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Miller's silver in the giant slalom pushed the U.S. to the 10-medal mark for the U.S. ski team, the highly publicized goal heading into the Games.

"For us, this is a team sport," said Bill Marolt, President/CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. "It's a family. We win together; we lose together. We got our 10 medals and so, as a company, we achieved our goals. Some didn't come in ways that we maybe thought, but that's the way the sport is."

— Scott Willoughby, MountainZone.com Correspondent