The Ski World Cup is back. In Sold (Austria) the 2024-25 season starts. It does so tomorrow at the same station where the curtain has been raised on the competition for men and women since 2000, with the exception of 2006. Then that weekend had to be canceled and the premiere postponed until two later, in Levi ( Finland). At 10.00 (Eurosport) The dance begins with the female Giant.
In a season that will stop in mid-February due to the World Cup celebrations (Saalbach), the figure of Mikaela Shiffrin is once again the one that demands the spotlight from the beginning. It is normal, because the skier from Vail is the great star of her sport and her record is already sports history. But this start of competition joins its name to a figure that for a long time seemed impossible to achieve in the World Cup: the 100 victories.
That allegorical figure is only three stops away Vail Express. If he did not arrive last season it was because of the tremendous fall he suffered on January 26 in the Descent of Cortina d’Ampezzo. The serious knee injury he suffered stopped a season in which he had already accumulated seven successes and in which he had the courage to come back and win the last two esalons of the season: Äre y Saalbach. He closed the season with 97 total wins in the World Cup and the Crystal Globe in his great specialty, Slalom.
SHIFFRIN
More history: going for the ninth
Shiffrin This season he opens his marital status, because during the summer he married another big star on the circuit, the Norwegian Alekxander Aamdot Source. And not only is 100 the number he has in mind in a career in which he left behind the marks of Lindsey Vonn (82) and Ingemar Stenmark (86). The other number that will accompany her this season is nine.
Why Shiffrin You can be the first to have nine Crystal Balloons in your home for the same specialty, Slalom. And that is also in masculine and feminine. The barrier so far stops at eight, those that have Ingemar Stone ground (in Slalom and the same in Giant) and Vonn in the queen test of speed, the Descent. In the 13 seasons that Shiffrin She has been in the World Cup, she has finished first in Slalom in eight and second in three more. Since 2017 he has not dropped from one of those two positions. To those Globes he adds five of the General, two in Giant and one in the Super Giant.
mIKI
The question
The season starts in Saalbach with the question of how those injured from last night will be. Because 2024-25 was full of bad news. Cancellations were a constant, as were serious injuries. The women’s Slalom was left without its two queens. Mikaela Shiffrin was injured on January 26, a week after the Slovak Peter Vlhova. He broke the cruciate ligament in his right knee in his country, in Jasna. That made the Swede Anna Swenn Larssonin Soldeu, will win an Eslalon after 10 consecutive victories between Shiffrin y Vlhova.
The list of serious injuries was tremendous last season: Marco Schwarz, Wendy Holdener, Alexis Pinturault, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Petra Vlhova, Corinne Suter, Sofia Goggia and Elena Curtoni. Kilde’s in Wengen left some terrifying images, as much as his leg was at risk of being amputated.
Odermatt, Gut and the Swiss Army… and Brazil
With the unknown of how these great stars of the snow circuit will be, the name of Marco Odermatt part as an absolute favorite among the boys. The Swiss winning machine took home four Globes last season: General, Giant, SG and Relegation. He only granted Slalom, because he does not work in that discipline. He equaled his record of racing seasons, the 13 of the previous year, and threatened the 14 victories chained by Ingermar Stenmark in it Gigante. His mistake in the Saalbach finals left his streak at 12. The status of super favorite will accompany the Swiss from this first Sölden Giant.
The Swiss team is the best. His navy has controlled the World Cup for a long time. Of the 10 Globes up for grabs last season, seven ended up in Swiss hands: four of Odermatt and three from Lara Gut. A Lara She is presented with the possibility of being the first to win the Super Giant Globe six times. Part of five after matching Vonn.
Lara Gut-Behrami, with the crystal globes she won last season.
The Nations Cup It was also Swiss, for the fourth time in the last five editions. Between 1988 and 2019, that crown always ended up in the hands of the ski Wunderteam, Austria. What starts this weekend in Sölden will once again be an Austrian challenge to regain its dominance. For now, the advantage is Switzerland.
And among the news, the return of Lucas Braathen, the Norwegian with a Brazilian mother who, after fighting with the Nordic Federation, will compete for Brazil, a country with no history in the snow.
