Ski Mountaineering Ski Mountaineering

Discover the latest insights and stories

Loic Meillard Wins Slalom Gold for Olympic Medal Set at Milano Cortina 2026

Loic Meillard turned earlier slalom bronze and giant-slalom silver into Olympic gold on Sunday, completing Switzerland’s first men’s three-medal sweep since Calgary 1988. Meillard Wins Slalom Gold After McGrath DNF Starting last among the leaders, the 27-year-old from Neuchâtel needed only to stay upright after Norway’s Atle Lie McGrath straddled gate five and recorded a DNF. Meillard punched the air at the next split, then coasted home with a 0.37-second cushion, finishing in 1:53.46 for the two runs. Fabio Gstrein of Austria took silver, 0.28 back, while four-time Crystal Globe winner Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway earned bronze, 0.89 behind, stretching his major-championship podium streak to nine. Heavy Snow Hammers First Run, Ends Greek Skier’s Career Snow fell so hard in Bormio that visibility dropped below 60 metres, yet McGrath still posted a 56.14 that no one matched. Meillard’s 56.73 was the only other sub-57 time. Timon Haugan and Gstrein stayed within a second; defending champion Clément Noel of France lost nearly two. Lucas Braathen’s bid for a second Brazilian medal ended at gate 14, and a rash of DNFs—including Manuel Feller, Alex Vinatzer and Eduard Hallberg—cut the field to 31 qualifiers. Bib 20-30 saw AJ Ginnis of Greece ski a clean 59.42, wave to family in the finish area, and confirm his retirement after 14 seasons and a 2023 World Championship silver. “I traded sea breeze for start gates,” Ginnis said. “Zero regrets.” Gstrein Delivers Austria’s Lone Men’s Alpine Medal Gstrein’s second-run 57.07 was not the fastest, but it protected a 0.78-second overnight lead and pushed him past Haugan into the medals. “I told myself, ‘Green light equals podium,’” the 26-year-old Salzburger said. The silver is his first at a global championship and Austria’s only men’s alpine medal of the Games after shutouts in downhill, super-G and combined. Kristoffersen Grabs Bronze on “Off Day” Kristoffersen, who turns 32 next month, said he “never found rhythm” yet still edged first-run pacesetter Tanguy Nef of Switzerland by 0.89 and Armand Marchant of Belgium by 0.02. The bronze is his fourth across three Olympics and adds to six World Championship podiums. “Bronze on a bad day beats fourth on a perfect one,” he shrugged, recalling his own straddle in PyeongChang 2018: “I’ve been Atle—so I know the sting.” Records and Next Races Meillard becomes the first Swiss man to collect three medals at one Winter Games and only the fifth alpine skier ever to sweep gold, silver and bronze, joining Janica Kostelić and Tina Maze among others. Switzerland finishes the alpine program with four medals, matching Austria for the most by any nation. Focus now shifts to the women’s slalom on 18 February, where Mikaela Shiffrin, Wendy Holdener and Petra Vlhová could close the Milano-Cortina fortnight with another milestone. Useful Resources FIS official results portal Swiss-Ski athlete hub “Inside the Gates” podcast Ski Racing Media archive Source: Original race reporting

Michael Brown · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-12 11:23

Federica Brignone Wins Second Gold in Cortina Giant Slalom

Federica Brignone Wins Second Gold at Cortina 2026 With Giant-Slalom Victory Federica Brignone captured her second gold of the Cortina Games on 15 February, winning the Olympic giant-slalom by 0.62 seconds after earlier triumphing in super-G. Sweden’s Sara Hector and Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund finished with identical aggregate times to share silver. Brignone Completes Comeback With GS Gold Three weeks after breaking a leg in a January training crash, the 34-year-old Italian laid down a fearless first-run 1:03.23 on the Tofane piste, the only sub-1:04 clocking of the morning. That 0.74-second buffer proved decisive; although Germany’s Lena Duerr trimmed the margin to 0.34 seconds, Brignone answered with a poised second leg, finishing in 2:07.84 and dropping Duerr to fourth. The victory gives the host nation its seventh alpine medal of the meet and elevates Brignone into the rare group of athletes who have won both speed and tech events at the same Winter Games. Twin Silvers After Dead-Heat Finish Hector and Stjernesund, both 30, recorded the same 2:08.46 total, down to the hundredth, after two runs. Starting bib 2, Hector set the early benchmark of 1:03.97, a time later matched by Stjernesund and Albania’s Lara Colturi. In the afternoon, Stjernesund nudged into provisional first, only for Hector to stop the clock at the same 1:04.49, replicating the morning symmetry. Race officials confirmed no tie-break protocol applies for second place, awarding matching silver medals and sparing the jury a photo-finish review. Shiffrin, Goggia Miss Podium in Tight Field Mikaela Shiffrin entered the day as the World Cup giant-slalom standings leader but never found rhythm on the steep middle flush, ending 0.93 seconds adrift in sixth. Italy’s Sofia Goggia, racing in a sleeveless speedsuit that has become her trademark, threatened with the third-fastest first run but clipped a gate in the final corridor and slipped to fifth. With seven skiers within half a second after run one, the contest echoed the men’s GS 24 hours earlier, where fractions separated the entire top ten. Course Set Rewarded Precision Over Risk Designer Fabio Barbaro placed the most technical gates on the rolling terrain just above the finish fan, forcing athletes to float rather than carve. “You had to stay clean through the blind roller at 43,” Stjernesund said. “Miss the line by 15 cm and the ski just takes off.” The setup produced historically tight splits: for the first time in Olympic history, three women shared the same first-run time, and two duplicated the aggregate. Brignone Credits Low Expectations for Freedom Speaking beside the finish corral, Brignone admitted she arrived without normal race fitness. “I had no training block, just gym rehab and two days of free-skiing,” she said. “Because nobody expected anything, I could attack without fear.” The double mirrors the feat of her childhood idol Deborah Compagnoni, who swept giant-slalom and super-G at the 1998 Nagano Games, and lifts Brignone to 11 career Olympic/World Championship medals. Useful Resources FIS Alpine Hub – Live timing sheets, start lists and post-race reports for every Olympic alpine event Cortina 2026 Course Maps – PDF downloads showing gate numbers, pitch profiles and video fly-throughs of each discipline Ski Racing Magazine Injury Protocol Guide – Explains return-to-snow benchmarks used by World Cup medical staff after leg fractures OSSA Academy YouTube Channel – Technique breakdowns of Brignone’s GS line versus Shiffrin’s, frame-by-frame Team Sweden Alpine Blog – Sara Hector’s weekly training diary entries throughout the rehabilitation that brought her back to Olympic form Source: Original race report filed 15 February 2026

Robert Johnson · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-11 18:36

Ski Mountaineering Results: Meillard Slalom Gold, Oldham Big Air Win, Austria Super Team

Blizzard Disrupts Milano Cortina 2026 but Fails to Stop Record Medal Spree Wednesday’s storm postponed starts, buried landings under knee-deep drifts and wiped out training sessions across two valleys, yet it could not stop a historic rush of medals: six awarded, three sports, two venues and a string of Olympic firsts that will outlast the snow now melting on the valley floor. Swiss Skier Ends 78-Year Alpine Slalom Drought Loïc Meillard attacked a rutted second-run course in Bormio to give Switzerland its first men’s slalom gold since 1948, completing a personal set he began with giant-slalom silver and super-G bronze earlier in the Games. The 27-year-old from Neuchâtel trailed Norway’s Atle Lie McGrath by 0.12 s at the midway point, then watched the leader straddle a gate as visibility fell. Meillard’s clean line produced a combined 1:49.03, beating Austria’s Fabio Gstrein by 0.27 s and Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen by 0.45 s in a race that recorded 31 DNFs among 71 starters. “When the green light flashed I knew the 78-year monkey was gone,” Meillard said. Canadians, Italians Rewrite Freestyle Big Air Podium Megan Oldham stomped a switch left-side 1260 mute and a forward 1440 safety to overtake defending champion Eileen Gu in a Livigno final delayed four hours while crews shoveled graupel off the in-run. The 22-year-old Ontarian totaled 182.25 points, handing Canada its first women’s Big Air title since the event debuted in Beijing. Italy’s Flora Tabanelli, competing on a torn ACL, landed a cork 1080 tail on her last jump to earn the host nation’s first Olympic freestyle medal of any color. Four women topped 90 points in round one, showing how the storm-shortened practice forced athletes to judge rotation speed on the fly. Austria Wins First-Ever Ski Jump Super Team Gold Jan Hörl and Stefan Embacher scored 534.0 points over two rounds to claim the debut men’s super-team event, a knockout format that pits two nations side-by-side on adjacent hills. Snow canceled the final round in Predazzo, locking Poland 11 points back and Norway 6.5 further behind. Hörl, empty-handed through six prior events, called the gold “a pressure-valve release” for an Austrian squad that arrived targeting four medals. Germany, the pre-event favorite, settled for fourth when the weather whistle ended competition. Weather Chaos Tests Athletes and Organizers Wednesday’s schedule was the most weather-exposed of the fortnight. Big Air training was scrubbed at dawn, women’s snowboard cross qualification shifted to Thursday, and ski jumpers warmed up twice before gusts hit 55 km/h sent them back to the team hotel. FIS race director Hannes Trinkl said contingency lights on the Bergisel hill and a 48-hour freestyle window at Mottolino kept the program alive. “Without that flex we would have lost two medal events outright,” Trinkl noted. Records, Farewells and Medal-Table Math Gu’s silver ties her with Kari Traa and Dale Begg-Smith for the most freestyle medals (five) in Olympic history; she can break the mark in Friday’s halfpipe. Greece’s AJ Ginnis took a final-run bow, ending a career that began on a dry slope outside Athens and produced Greece’s first World Cup podium last January. With three competition days left, Norway leads the tally (14 golds), but Switzerland’s late surge—boosted by Meillard and a women’s curling semifinal—moved it into a tie for fourth with Austria at eight golds. Sources: FIS Results Hub; Swiss-Ski Technical Bulletin; NOAA “Science of Snow” Brief; Olympic Schedule App; Safe Slopes Foundation

Sarah Brown · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-09 18:02

River Radamus Alpine Pulse Interview: Creativity, Pressure and Olympic Goals

River Radamus: Gratitude, Paint, and the Push for Cortina 2026River Radamus wakes up on race day and thinks “thank you” before he thinks about snow. The 26-year-old from Vail, Colorado, told the Alpine Pulse podcast the habit started when skiing was “just what we did after school,” not a job with a start list and a clock.Vail Roots Shaped Radamus’ Creative SkiingRadamus grew up on Vail Mountain’s backside, lapping runs before first bell, during lunch, and under floodlights after homework. His ski-patrol parents let him follow older kids through the trees; by eight he was sketching homemade line maps on printer paper to find the fastest fake split times. That freedom, he says, still shows up in the arcs that look off-script even when they’re on time.Youth Olympic Sweep Created Early PressureAt 16 he grabbed three golds at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Lillehammer, the first American to sweep any Olympic-level alpine event since Ted Ligety’s 2006 junior haul. Cereal-box fame followed, plus a fast-track invite to the U.S. Ski Team. Radamus says the hype “warped” his expectations; he hit the World Cup at 19 guessing podiums were automatic and instead logged two seasons deep in the 20s and 30s, learning raw speed needed surgery, not swagger.Radamus Uses Breath Ladder and Pole-Guard Cue to Handle StressNow a steady top-15 GS contender, Radamus runs a three-step pre-race drill: 60-second breath ladder, eyes-shut visualization, and the word “loose” inked on his pole guard. Mandatory sports-psych sessions came after three Soldeu DNFs in 2021 nearly booted him off the Olympic team. “I treated every run like it decided my identity,” he told host Nick Fellows. “Letting go of the story gave me the story I wanted.”Painting and Base-Top Art Keep Mind Flexible Off the HillAway from the gates he paints acrylic abstracts and designs his own Rossignol ski bases, sure that color choice nudges confidence. He cites psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow research, copying its narrow-focus rules to course inspection. Teammates joke about the art talk, yet Radamus notes Norway’s Lucas Braathen—who quit at 26 to make music—as proof creativity and elite racing can share a playlist.Cortina 2026 Looms as Radamus Targets First Olympic MedalEleven months out from the Milan-Cortina Games, Radamus has doubled gym sessions and cut summer bike miles to spare his knees. Coaches slotted him into the “red group,” a five-man test squad that gets first pick of race skis and wax. The giant-slalom course at Olimpia delle Tofane, all side-hill and high-line friendly, fits his game. His goal is plain: “Ski free, finish first, and still love the sport at breakfast.”Where to listen and watchAll episodes are available on:FIS TV  YouTube  Spotify  Apple Podcasts  DeezerNew Alpine Pulse – Unplugged clips post each Wednesday as the FIS Originals production, filmed with Maniac Studios, widens its lens on ski-racing culture.Useful ResourcesFIS Alpine Hub – Live timing, start lists, and athlete bios updated during every World Cup stop  Alpine Pulse Podcast Archive – More than 40 long-form interviews with stars such as Mikaela Shiffrin and Marco Odermatt  U.S. Ski & Snowboard Mental Strength Portal – Free workbooks on visualization, breathing routines, and post-race reset protocols  Cortina 2026 Course Maps – PDF downloads of Olympic GS, SL, and downhill lines for fans planning spectator routesSource: FIS Alpine Pulse podcast, February 2026 episode

David Williams · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-09 18:10

Milano-Cortina 2026 Slalom Finals: Preview, Start Lists and Medal Storylines

Milano-Cortina 2026 Slalom Finals: Brazathen and Shiffrin Hunt Last GoldsTwo slalom races—men’s on 16 Feb, women’s on 18 Feb—close the Milano-Cortina 2026 alpine calendar and decide the final golds before Sunday’s closing ceremony.Brazilian GS Champion Chases Historic Slalom DoubleLucas Pinheiro Braathen can become Brazil’s first two-medal Winter Olympian. The 23-year-old, who swapped Norway for his mother’s passport last autumn, already owns giant-slalom gold after Saturday’s upset in Bormio. He opens the slalom 1.48 s adrift of early pacesetter Henrik Kristoffersen yet leads the World Cup slalom hunt with 451 points—one ahead of Norway’s Atle Lie McGrath. McGrath, racing days after his grandfather’s funeral, called the emotional GS “a farewell lap” and now targets redemption on the same Canalone Mirabanco slope.Deep Men’s Field Targets Season TitleFifty-six racers will thread 75 gates, and the crystal globe is still live. France’s Clément Noël, the 2022 Olympic king, sits 76 points behind Braathen; teammates Paco Rassat and Switzerland’s Loïc Meillard are within striking distance. Meillard, already a bronze medallist here, trains with Tanguy Nef under Swiss-Ski drills built for the “alternating-set” format—coaches flip gate rhythms for the second run. Austria’s Manuel Feller, Germany’s Linus Straßer and Norway’s Timon Haugan all logged sub-52-second training times last week on the 32-degree head-wall.Shiffrin Seeks First Medal in Cortina SlalomMikaela Shiffrin has used a rare two-day gap to stone-grind and reboot. Seventh in super-G, sixth in combined and fifth in GS, the American owns 98 World Cup wins yet zero podiums so far at these Games. Swiss pair Camille Rast and Wendy Holdener topped Monday’s official training; Holdener already has team-event bronze and the 2022 slalom bronze. Austria’s Katharina Truppe and 17-year-old Albanian Lara Colturi, both sub-1:40 here in January’s World Cup, add speed to a field where 0.08 s decided the previous Olympic final.Vlhova Returns While Swiss Women Stack PodiumsReigning champion Petra Vlhova starts Wednesday with no 2025-26 World Cup points after December knee surgery. The Slovak skied a cautious combined leg last week to “test the joint” and admits she has “zero expectations, only curiosity.” Switzerland, meanwhile, could lock up a fourth alpine gold: Rast, Holdener and Mélanie Meillard have shared every World Cup slalom podium this season. Sweden’s Sara Hector, fresh from GS silver, plans an all-out line after missing the 2022 slalom cut, and Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund eyes a downhill-slalom double no Norwegian woman has ever achieved.Course Crews Prep Ice-Hard TrackOvernight crews will salt and water-inject the piste, favouring edge precision over hip drags. Forecasts show clear skies and minus-6 °C dawn starts both race days—perfect for the Olympic “alternating-set” format. First-run coaches set a rhythm track; second-run architects reverse offsets, forcing racers to recalculate radius on the fly. Last month’s World Cup here saw 30th-seeded Giuliano Razzoli post the fastest second-run split, proof that start-order reversals can sling outsiders onto the podium. First runs begin at 10:00 local, seconds at 13:30.How to Watch and Track ResultsEurosport and NBC’s Peacock stream live from 09:45 CET. Real-time splits refresh every gate on the FIS Live Timing page. Download the “Milano-Cortina 26” app for push alerts when chosen bib numbers leave the start wand. Arrive at the Tofana chairlift before 08:00 to claim a view above Gate 38—historically the spot that decides slalom victories here.Sources: FIS, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, Swiss-Ski, Eurosport broadcast notesAction Steps for Following the FinalsCheck the official start list the night before—bibs 1-15 get the cleanest course, yet 16-30 often charge hardest in Run 2.  Screen-capture World Cup points tables; quick math during Run 1 shows who still owns a statistical shot at the crystal globe.  Layer up: the Cortina grandstand sits at 1,650 m and shade creeps in after 11:30; chemical toe warmers keep feet nimble if you stand for both runs.  Record split times on your phone; sector speeds reveal who is risking early versus conserving energy for the pitch.  Stay after the flower ceremony—mixed-zone interviews often hint at retirement plans, coaching changes or equipment tweaks that shape next season’s narrative.

Jennifer Jones · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-07 18:28

Women's Ski Mountaineering Olympic Debut: 2026 Milano Cortina Sprint Results

Snow fell on the Stelvio piste above Bormio as 24 women stepped into the start gate for the first Olympic ski-mountaineering sprint, 6:55 a.m. local time, 28 February 2026. Fifty-one seconds after the starter’s beep, the field strung out in a herringbone climb, and a new discipline officially entered the five-ring circus. Olympic Sprint Format and “Lucky Loser” Rule Organisers compressed qualification, two semifinals and the final into 75 minutes to satisfy broadcasters. Each 250-metre lap climbed 80 m on skins, forced a 180-degree switch to boot-pack, then dropped racers back down on locked heels. The top three from each opening heat advanced automatically; the next three fastest times overall earned “lucky loser” slots, ensuring an unlucky draw could not eliminate a medal threat. The structure produced 12 semifinalists from 18 starters and kept medal hopes alive for two women who had placed only third in their heats. Transition Speed Decides Inaugural Women’s Ski-Mo Gold In the four-woman final the champion covered the course in 2 min 59.77 s, using a carbon-over-paulownia ski 5 cm shorter than her qualifier set to shave weight. The pre-race World Cup points leader took silver, 2.38 s back, after fumbling a skin clip at the second transition and losing pole rhythm on the boot-pack. Bronze finished 10.45 s behind the winner, remarkable given the athlete had skipped World Championships four months earlier to rehab ligament damage from a roadside collision and chose conservative, non-surgical treatment to stay eligible for Milano-Cortina. Wet Snow Exposes Gear Differences Persistent snowfall turned the synthetic track abrasive, forcing several competitors to re-adjust binding heel risers mid-race. Coaches reported a three-second spread between the quickest and slowest transitions, equal to the final medal gap. Manufacturers whose toe-pieces allow one-motion heel rotation, still rare on the World Cup circuit, gained an instant advantage, while athletes on standard alpine-derived frames lost poles or skins when ice clogged the lever. The conditions validated recent rule tweaks that permit any ISO-certified binding but highlighted equity concerns: wealthier federations had shipped four ski-binding combinations per racer; smaller teams arrived with one. Medal Spread Shows Sport’s Global Reach Medals landed with traditional mountain nations and a federation that had never previously stood on a Winter podium, illustrating ski-mountaineering’s low infrastructure barrier. The winning programme built its base at an alpine tunnel that charges €12 per dawn ascent, far cheaper than lift-served downhill academies. The climb-heavy format favours aerobic engines common in distance running and cycling, inviting talent transfers from nations without glacial terrain. International Ski Mountaineering Federation data show licence growth of 42 % in Eastern Europe since 2022, a curve Olympic inclusion is expected to steepen. Broadcast Plans and Future Events Rights-holder NBC aired a same-day package rather than the live 6:55 a.m. ET start, ceding morning bandwidth to European prime time. Graphics teams borrowed the “ghost-skier” overlay pioneered in snowboard cross to illustrate transition splits, but commentators still spent 43 % of airtime explaining skins, crampons and boot-pack poles. Looking ahead, ISMF directors will lobby for vertical-team events at the 2030 Games, citing cross-country skiing’s expansion from sprint to skiathlon as precedent. National Olympic committees must decide whether to fold ski-mo into existing alpine structures or fund standalone coaching staffs; early movers could lock in medal pathways before specialised talent pools deepen worldwide. Gear Impact Under Wet Snow Talent Pathways Beyond the Alps Recommended Resources International Ski Mountaineering Federation – Official rulebook, World Cup calendars, and continental qualifier pathways “Training for the Uphill Athlete” by House, Johnston, Jornet – Science-backed manual on endurance, transition drills, and strength specific to skinning Skintrack.com community forum – Crowd-sourced gear reviews, snow condition reports, and technique videos from recreational to elite level SkiMo.coach app – Free interval timer and transition split logger that exports data to coaches for Olympic-format analysis

Sienna Vaughn · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-06 11:19

On the Edge Disney+ Series Follows 2026 Alpine World Cup Athletes

Disney+ Launches Five-Part Alpine Ski Racing Docuseries After Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic SpotlightDisney+ Streams Ski Docuseries After Olympic BuzzOn the Edge: World Cup Ski Racing landed on Disney+ and ESPN platforms Jan. 30, six days after the Milano-Cortina 2026 flame was extinguished. The five-part series shadows the 2025-26 FIS Alpine World Cup circuit from Beaver Creek to Lillehammer, embedding with Mikaela Shiffrin, Marco Odermatt, Sofia Goggia and newly retired Lucas Pinheiro Braathen. Rights holder FIS is banking that the behind-gates footage—hotel-room nerves, dawn wax tests, midnight physio—will turn Olympic curiosity into year-round viewers.Athletes Open Locker-Room Doors for CamerasDirectors pinned access badges to the U.S., Norwegian and Italian teams, then parked remote lenses in hotel corridors, physio trucks and wax cabins. Episode arcs track Shiffrin mid-coach change, Odermatt calculating Kitzbühel risk, and Goggia clawing back confidence after a December crash. Lindsey Vonn narrates and mentors, framing each hour around one pillar: speed, agility, resilience, mindset, legacy. Race clips stay secondary; heartbeat data, voice memos and family FaceTime shots drive the story.Emmy-Winning Crew Films 4 A.M. to 10 P.M. GrindPat Dimon—Emmy winner for NBC Olympic features and former Burke Mountain junior racer—pitched the project after trailing the women’s tech squad last winter. “The broadcast clock stops at the finish line; the athlete’s day starts at 4 a.m. with snow reports and ends at 10 p.m. with lactate tests,” he told FIS media. Crews hauled 30 kg of gear up Hahnenkamm’s Mausefalle, planted 360-degree cameras, then sprinted downhill before the next training run. Motion graphics translate side-cut radius, edge angles and DIN release settings for Disney’s family audience.Global Rollout Staggers Episodes by RegionEpisodes 1–4 arrived Jan. 30 in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Asia-Pacific, dubbed in French, German, Italian and Norwegian. Latin America and remaining EMEA markets get the first three instalments Feb. 20 in Spanish and Portuguese. Episode 5, still un-dated, will wrap March’s Lillehammer finals and include Milano-Cortina 2026 bonus scenes, doubling as a season recap before the Madrid awards gala. ESPN keeps first-window ad rights in the U.S.; Disney+ streams ad-free overseas, mirroring the Welcome to Wrexham release pattern.FIS Pins Growth Hopes on Docuseries After Olympic SpikePresident Johan Eliasch calls the €4 million production—part-funded by Audi—the federation’s “biggest branded-content bet” since 2021. ESPN app data show 62 % of U.S. viewers aged 18-34 had not watched a full World Cup race last season; FIS wants the series to close that gap before the 2027 Worlds in Sweden. Spanish- and German-language TikTok spin-offs are already in edit, aiming to flip streaming curiosity into ticket sales at Sölden, Levi and Val d’Isère next autumn.Quick Access SourcesFIS official website – race calendars, live timing, athlete bios  Disney+ subscription page – regional bundles that include ESPN for U.S. viewers  U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team media guide – downloadable athlete stats  Red Bull “How to Watch Alpine Skiing” primer – scoring and terminology for newcomersSource: FIS press room, Disney+ media kit, Feb. 28 2026

Emily Miller · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-05 11:15

Kajsa Vickhoff Lie: From Crash to First Norwegian Women’s World Cup Downhill Win

Kajsa Vickhoff Lie left her first Olympics with two diplomas and a clear head. The 26-year-old from Oslo logged top-eight finishes in Downhill and Team Combined last month in the French Alps, then told the Alpine Pulse podcast that a 2020 knee blow-out, lockdown boredom, and a side hustle in pizza paved the road to Norway’s first women’s World Cup downhill win.Olympic Debut Delivers Diplomas, Not MedalsVickhoff Lie missed the Downhill podium by 0.38 sec yet still earned Olympic diplomas—awards given to fourth- through eighth-place finishers. “It felt like the project is real,” she told host Chris. “I finally stopped asking if I belong.”Crash, Lockdown, ComebackFebruary 2020: a mistimed compression in Val di Fassa shredded her ACL, MCL, and meniscus. Surgeons rebuilt the knee days before Europe shut down, so she rehabbed alone in a basement gym, ticking off 5,000 single-leg squats on a spreadsheet. Back on snow in November 2021, she hunted every Nor-Am and Europa Cup start available. On 21 January 2023 she became the first Norwegian woman to win a World Cup downhill, at St. Anton.Building Norway’s First Women’s Speed PipelineBefore Vickhoff Lie, Norway never started more than one woman in downhill. She fixed that by founding the “Full Gas Speed Camp” at Geilo each June, lending timing gear from the federation and hiring the coaches who rebuilt her gait. Four juniors now race Europa Cup speed events, doubling national depth in two seasons. “Talent was there; we just needed a door,” she says.Off-Hill Income: Pizzeria and PaperbackSponsors covered medical bills, but royalties and rent rolled in from “Boccone,” the 38-seat pizzeria she co-opened near Oslo Central. She still stretches dough on off-weekends. Last fall her memoir-cum-manual Fartsglad (“Speed-Happy”) hit Norwegian best-seller lists; proceeds now fund wind-tunnel sessions before World Championships.Culture of Fast: Rivalry and RecordTeammate Ragnhild Mowinckel fires over split times seconds after every training run. They share wax techs, split coaching invoices, and keep a running €10 bet on who tops the speed trap. “We decided fear is cheaper outside Norway,” Vickhoff Li jokes. Their pairing pushed Norway to fourth in the women’s Nations Cup this winter—best finish ever.Quick Takeaways for Racers and CoachesEnter every open FIS race within driving distance—Europa Cup points still count toward World Cup start quotas  Run summer camps that include immediate video review; second-run feedback fast-tracks confidence  Pair injured athletes with flexible local jobs; steady income shortens psychological recovery  Watch the full Alpine Pulse chat on FIS TV—coaches say copying her flat-section tuck shaves two-tenthsSource: FIS Alpine press release

Robert Williams · Ski Mountaineering · 2026-03-04 11:49

8 of 8 articles