Stephen Copp from Sweden was the surprising winner here today in the season's fourth Giant Slalom. Having finished sixth in the first run, he did not put too much pressure on himself which might have helped him capture his first-ever win in GS.

	van Ert

And US rider Sondra van Ert, who won here last year, took it again today. "I was hoping maybe Michael von Grüningen was giving out the awards again this year," she said. "Before I won here last year, I had fallen in love with this slope. It's such a great GS run with a little bit of everything."

Having been able to relax in the sunshine, between the comp's two runs, the finals turned out to be pure excitement on a challenging course and the results were not at all what had been expected.

"For me it was so good," Copp said, "I've never had two really good runs in GS for the past five years, I'm so happy that I could work it out today. I always try to ride smoothly and I think that was the right way today. The slope was a bit tricky, especially in the beginning, so I forced myself to be smooth and just go as fast as possible, but you had to be careful since it was pretty flat at some points as well and if you got too much pressure there you slowed down instead of speeding up."

Second place ended up in a tie between France's Matthieu Bozzetto and Austria's Felix Stadler.

"I made some mistakes and lost quite some time. Therefore I wasn't really happy when I arrived at the finish...."— Matthieu Bozzetto, tied for 2nd

"Maybe I started a little too aggressively," Bozzetto said, "I made some mistakes and lost quite some time. Therefore I wasn't really happy when I arrived at the finish. I didn't expect to end up second though and am really happy.

Stadler had a similar thought saying, "A win would have been perfect after my results so far plus it seemed to be possible when I could beat Bozzetto in the first run but there was Stephen Copp also..."

Bozzetto added another yellow bib to his collection today: Apart from the Parallel World Cup and the Overall, he is now ranked first in the Giant Slalom. Austria's Stefan Kaltschütz, who badly crashed in yesterday's training and had to go home, is in second now ahead of Stephen Copp.

	Copp

France's Karine Ruby took second place for the women and it looks like now she will be able to catch up to her results last year. "It's really getting better now," she said, "I had to learn to accept things you can't change and stop asking all those questions why this and that happened. I'm really happy that it works." Sandra Farmand from Germany finished third.

For the first time this year van Ert took the yellow leader bib in Giant Slalom while Sweden's Aasa Windahl, who finished tenth, dropped back to second in the standings. Ruby is in third now.

The Schönried event will be concluded tomorrow with the season's fourth Snowboard Cross race.

—Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent