Craig Branch has made the first downhill top 30 of his career, and lifted his pb six spots, skiing to 27th place in Val Gardena, Italy.

In a weekend that emphatically demonstrated the success of his comeback from injury, the Perisher Blue 30-year-old had also set a pb in the super G a day earlier, finishing in 31st place.

Branch earned the first World Cup points of his career in the downhill, recording a time of one minute 59.16 seconds down the 3.5km Saslong course. His time was 2.46 seconds behind the winning mark of Torino silver medallist Michael Walchhofer of Austria.

Defending World Cup downhill champion Didier Cuche of Switzerland was second, .18 seconds behind the Austrian, with the bronze going to US skier Scott Macartney.

“I'm really happy with the result from the downhill,” Branch said.

“It was a pretty successful weekend all round, having two personal best finishes.”

“The super G on Friday was also my best result in that discipline. I was painfully close to the top 30 again, even closer than last week in Beaver Creek.”

“This time it was four hundredths of a second. I had one bad section in that race and lost quite a bit of time, so it was a little disappointing when I saw the split times and saw what I could have done without that bad section. But all in all I was happy with that SG result and I think it really gave me confidence in my skiing and fired me up for the downhill the next day.”

“I would have to say it’s my best ever downhill performance and I’m stoked with the result. I knew my skiing was going well, but my goal for the day was to charge hard and see where it would put me. I did that, was a little loose in a few sections but felt like I was carrying good speed.”

“The course was tough, super fast and had a lot of terrain to deal with, not to mention the 70 metre camel jumps in the middle of the course!”

“It feels great to come back from a serious knee injury last year and back into the best form of my career. It was an awesome feeling and I know there is more to come.”

Branch now goes to the Bormio downhill on December 29, with three personal best performances behind him from the six events he has contested.

In other alpine news, Katya Crema has finished 12th in a Nor-Am super G event in Panorama, British Columbia, while Ski and Snowboard Australia team-mate Brenton Fetterplace has skied to 13th place in the Nor-Am downhill in Lake Louise.