As Alpine skiing World Cup season ends, stage is set for a star-studded Olympics

New York Times

31-03-2025

KETCHUM, Idaho — The top three finishers in the women's super-G at the Alpine skiing World Cup finals have combined for 323 podium spots on the sport's top circuit, along with 167 wins and eight overall season titles. That's all to go with 22 world championship medals and nine Olympic medals.
And yet on March 23, for the first time at any of those events, Lara Gut-Behrami, Lindsey Vonn and Federica Brignone — three of the great speed skiers of all time — were all on the same podium for the first time.
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It was one of the defining images of a week where all three were in the headlines throughout the season's final event. The Italian Brignone won the downhill, giant slalom and overall season titles. Switzerland's Gut-Behrami unleashed a perfect run in that super-G to win the race, swiping the season title away from Brignone, to finish second in the overall standings.
And Vonn finished second in that race, right between the two current titans of speed events in women's Alpine, adding more weight to the notion that she can be a medal contender next winter in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, when she will be 41 years old.
Then Thursday, Mikaela Shiffrin won her 101st career World Cup race, taking the slalom in the season's final event. She wasn't able to compete in the giant slalom at the World Cup finals — she didn't have enough points after missing much of the season due to injury and struggling in that event in her return — but she made clear she intends to keep training for it.
As the world's best Alpine skiers head into the offseason before the 2026 Olympics, the names to watch leading into the Games are quite clear.
At 34, Brignone had the best season of her career with 10 World Cup race victories to notch her second career overall title and is poised to be a gold-medal favorite in her home country. Fellow Italian Sofia Goggia, a four-time winner of the World Cup downhill title, just matched her career best with a third-place finish in the overall standings.
Brignone and Goggia will carry high hopes for Italy into an Olympics in their backyard.
'The Olympics are something really big and amazing,' Brignone said this week. 'For sure, making a big event at home, it (gives) you a lot of pressure. I hope that (the whole team) can be calm and show our best because it's going to be an amazing slope for the men (in Bormio), amazing slope for the women (in Cortina). It's going to be something that emotionally will be forever there.'
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'Me and Federica are pushing the team really hard,' Goggia, 32, said, 'and we're pushing each other. That's it. When you have good horses, start to run fast, everyone is going to run faster.'
The 32-year-old Gut-Behrami won her third straight super-G title with a rousing performance last Sunday and is in a position to be the favorite to defend her Olympic gold in the event from 2022.
And Vonn showed that she's to be taken every bit as seriously.
'A lot of people said when I retired at 33 that I was too old,' Vonn said. 'So the fact that (Brignone) at 34 just won the overall title, Lara's still skiing, I mean — age is just a number. If you feel good and you're mentally still driven and you work hard, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.'
Asked about the three 30-plus-year-olds on the super-G podium, Gut-Behrami pointed to the experience factor.
'You have to be clever,' she said. 'And usually with a few more runs in super-G, (with) more experience, it's easier to be fast on these courses.'
Across the fastest three disciplines, some of the best to ever do it are poised to go head-to-head at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn (first, with 43), Goggia (fourth, with 19) and Gut-Behrami (tied for eighth, with 13) are three of the winningest World Cup downhill skiers of all time. Vonn (28) and Gut-Behrami (24) are 1-2 all-time in super-G, with Brignone in fifth (13). Shiffrin (22) and Brignone (17) are first and third all-time, respectively, in giant slalom.
As for slalom, the headliner will be Shiffrin, whose record 64 World Cup wins in that discipline are nearly double the second-highest total. Her chief rival of recent years, Slovakia's Petra Vlhová, has missed more than a year due to a knee injury.
But anything can happen in a single race on the Olympic stage, and Shiffrin has another foe to overcome — rebounding from 2022.
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At the Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin competed in all six events. She didn't finish three of the races and, surprisingly, came home without any medals — including skiing out in her signature event, the slalom, while Vlhová won gold. Now, less than a year out, Shiffrin is the slalom favorite and intends to train for giant slalom as well.
Shiffrin and Vonn aren't the only Americans who intend to have a say. Lauren Macuga, 22, was the top U.S. skier in the two speed disciplines and won a super-G race in January for her first career World Cup win. Breezy Johnson won a surprising gold in the downhill at the world championships and finished sixth in the downhill World Cup standings. And Paula Moltzan took giant slalom bronze at the worlds.
There's greatness on the men's side, too. Since the Beijing Olympics, Switzerland's Marco Odermatt has seized control of the sport, winning four straight overall World Cup titles. He has won the downhill, super-G and giant slalom crystal globes each of the last two years. Just 27, he's already sixth on the all-time World Cup wins list for men with 45.
The men's slalom might be the most compelling of the bunch. Norway's Henrik Kristoffersen secured his fourth slalom season title on Thursday, but it was not easy. He finished fourth in the race to hold off Switzerland's Loïc Meillard and fellow Norwegian Timon Haugan, who won the race, in the standings. Kristoffersen called it a 'relief' more than happiness to retain his spot atop the standings and teased that he might not return next season because of the toll this year had taken.
Of all the names on the list, the only one that couldn't have been predicted a year ago is Vonn, who just four months back into competitive skiing after nearly a six-year absence has made herself a serious medal threat for the final chapter of her career. She plans to retire, for good, after the 2026 Olympics.
At an event last Tuesday outside a ski lodge to promote her new line of clothing, on the opposite side of the mountain on which two days earlier she had produced the most impressive run of her comeback, Vonn took pictures with and signed autographs for fans. A DJ played music nearby with a backdrop of chairlifts and gondolas bringing recreational skiers up the mountain for their runs. Vonn-branded cookies made the rounds.
If you had gone to sleep when Vonn left the sport in 2019 and woken up just then, you'd think the scene makes perfect sense for a recently retired star athlete.
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Except Vonn is very much back. There is still a partial World Cup season to unfold before the Milan-Cortina Games begin. Nothing is certain yet. But as the 2024-25 season ends, Alpine skiing is set up for a blockbuster Olympics, headlined by the very real possibility of Vonn winning another medal.
'I know for next year that I belong on the podium,' Vonn said.
(Top photo of Lindsey Vonn, Lara Gut-Behrami and Federica Brignone: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)