Records were broken, slopes were longing for snow and champions defended their titles!
On October 23rd, 2022, the Alpine Ski World Cup made its debut, at least for the men in Sölden. The ladies had to wait two weeks due to lack of snow and then started the season in Levi, with sensational slope conditions and the loveliest Bib design of the whole season.
In an incredible 43 individual competitions (42 for the ladies) the athletes gathered points for their overall ranking over the months until the World Cup final in Soldeu and one thing can be said for sure, the competition was fierce.
The Swiss Marco Odermatt and the American Mikaela Shiffrin both made history this winter as they defended their titles as overall champions and set records in the process! Shiffrin achieved an incredible feat by surpassing Ingemar Stenmark’s long-standing record of 87 World Cup victories, while Odermatt achieved his best season yet with 2042 points, breaking Hermann Maier’s previous record of 2000 points set in 1999/2000. This is a clearly winter to remember!
Despite the hard weather conditions and lack of snow, the show went on! However, there have been some cancelations and replacements along the way. Unfortunately, the one parallel event for both men and women was cancelled and not replaced, in addition to four downhills for the men and two downhills and a Super-G for the women.
The Norwegians also proved themselves this year. Even though they didn’t make it to first place in the men’s overall standings, they still managed to take second, third, and fourth places. Right behind the Swiss winner was the downhill champion and overall World Cup winner of the 2019/20 season, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.
Austria also managed to secure a spot on the podium! With Vincent Kriechmayr, Marco Schwarz and Daniel Hemetsberger for the men and Cornelia Hütter, Mirjam Puchner and Franziska Gritsch for the women, the team managed to gather enough points to take third place in the nation rankings.
Alongside successes and records, this season also celebrated some career ends. Ski legends such as Beat Feuz, Travis Ganong, Matthias Mayer, Mauro Caviezel and Nici Schmidhofer all announced their retirement from the ski circus this year.
The 47th FIS Alpine World Ski Championships
At the World Ski Championships, the Swiss shined yet again, clinching a large number of medals in the overall standings. The biggest surprise this year was surely the team parallel event where the American team proved to be the dark horses, and pulled off a major upset by denying Norway the chance to defend their title. Ultimately, Switzerland soared to the top, earning the most gold medals, while Norway narrowly followed in second place, with the United States finishing a close third.
