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Last weekend, the Ski World Cup, the main professional racing circuit, ended: a Swiss skier and a man, Lara Gut-Behrami and Marco Odermatt, won the overall women’s and men’s classification, in which the points are added obtained in all the races of the four specialties (downhill, super G, giant slalom and special slalom). Odermatt, 26 years old, won it for the third time in a row, confirming himself as the most complete and consistent skier at the moment. In addition to the overall World Cup, Odermatt also won those in the individual disciplines of super G, giant slalom and, for the first time in his career, downhill: in short, he was the strongest in three of the four disciplines. The last skier to win four crystal balls (the trophies awarded to the winners of the world cup) in a single year was the Austrian Hermann Maier, in 2000-2001.
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Odermatt’s season was exceptional in many respects: he won 13 of the 25 races he participated in, arriving on the podium (and therefore in the top three) 20 times. The 13 seasonal victories are a record equaled in men’s skiing: in the past they were achieved by the Swede Ingemar Stenmark (1979) and the Austrians Hermann Maier (2001) and Marcel Hirscher (2018). Only Marco Odermatt, however, has managed it two years in a row, given that last season he had won 13 races too.
In this World Cup Odermatt scored 1,974 points, 874 more than the second place finisher, his compatriot Loïc Meillard: it is the largest margin ever for a men’s World Cup. Last year, Odermatt broke the points record with 2,047, while this season he did not surpass it also due to the many races canceled (16 out of 90 between women and men) due to bad weather conditions. Last Sunday, the last downhill race of the World Cup, in Saalbach, Austria, was also cancelled: if Odermatt had won he could have taken another 100 points and beaten his record.
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However, the specialty in which Odermatt is strongest is undoubtedly the giant slalom, a discipline considered by many to be the most complete, because it requires both great technique and great speed. This season the Swiss has been practically unbeatable, winning 9 races out of 10, and only the exit from the race in the last giant slalom, again in Saalbach, prevented him from closing the season with a perfect 10 out of 10. If you consider last season too, Odermatt won 12 consecutive giants, coming close to the all-time record (Ingemar Stenmark’s 14 giants at the end of the Seventies).
Odermatt posing with the trophies won this season (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)
In the last giant slalom he won, in Aspen, Colorado, Odermatt had made a fairly serious mistake at the start of the second heat (the giant and special slalom are run over two heats): despite this he still managed to get back in the race and win ahead of Meillard, demonstrating in the final part of the race a superiority that was difficult to counter by the other skiers.
Odermatt, who is also the reigning Olympic champion in giant slalom, has won 37 World Cup races so far (23 in giant slalom, 12 in super G and 2 in downhill, both this season). In the all-time ranking he is seventh for World Cup victories, but what is quite exceptional is that he took very little time: he won 37 races in just 5 seasons, something even formidable skiers like the Austrian have never achieved. Benjamin Raich, the Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal and the Frenchman Alexis Pinturault, who took at least 10 years to reach a comparable number of victories (the three won 36, 36 and 34 races respectively).
If he were to continue winning at this rate, Odermatt could already next season surpass the Swiss Pirmin Zurbriggen (40 victories) and the Luxembourg Marc Girardelli (46) in the all-time rankings, approaching the 50 of the Italian Alberto Tomba, the fourth skier ever with the most World Cup victories. The 86 victories of the Swede Ingemar Stenmark, achieved between 1975 and 1989, are very difficult to reach, but for Odermatt second and third place seem at least approachable, where for now the two Austrians Marcel Hirscher and Hermann Maier are ( 67 and 54 victories). Among the skiers still active, none come close to Odermatt’s numbers.
2024-03-26 16:45:11
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