Featuring a slalom run and then a downhill contest on the iconic Lauberhorn mountain, 23-year-old Schwarz finished top of the standings with an overall time of 2min 36.92sec.

France claimed both second and third through Victor Muffat-Jeandet and Alexis Pinturault respectively, with little over a second separating the top three.

Schwarz, who specialises in the slalom discipline, established a lead after the slalom run with a time of 48.7sec, putting him marginally ahead of Pinturault, who managed 48.97.

Despite the heavy snowfall, Schwarz set a time on the second leg of 1:48.15 to win by just 0.42 seconds ahead of Muffat-Jeandet.

Pinturault dropped to third after setting a downhill time of 1:49.07.

Schwarz's win moves him into sixth place on the overall World Cup standings on 384 points, while Pinturault's third place finish was enough to see him in the top three on 554.

Austria's Marcel Hirscher, who is not competing in Wengen, continues to lead the way on 976.

Across the border, Ramona Siebenhofer won the first Women’s Downhill World Cup event in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy to claim the first World Cup victory of her career.

The 27-year-old Austrian, who has finished third on the World Cup circuit twice, took the win in 1:15.44, four tenths of a second ahead of Slovenia’s Ilka Stuhec.

Third went to another Austrian Stephanie Venier, who managed a time of 1:15.90.

The overall Downhill World Cup leader, another Austrian Nicole Schmidhofer, finished 12^th with a time of 1:16.39, while 82-time World Cup winner Lindsey Vonn finished 15^th on her return from a knee injury.

The US star crossed the line in 1:16.63, 1.19 behind the winner.

Schmidhofer remains first in the World Cup standings despite her 12th place finish as she has 248 points, while Stuhec is second on 238 and today’s winner Siebenhofer is third on 220.

A second downhill event will go ahead tomorrow, before a super-G contest is held on Sunday (January 20).