Skiers Odermatt, Kilde carry World Cup rivalry into worlds
Top men to watch at the Alpine skiing world championships, which open Monday in Courchevel and Meribel, France:
Closing in on his second overall title, Marco Odermatt’s dominance on the World Cup circuit makes it hard to believe he has never won a world championship medal. What’s more, the Olympic super-G champion from Switzerland finished better than 10th only once in six starts at the worlds, placing fourth in the 2021 downhill. Odermatt has racked up eight World Cup wins this season, evenly divided between super-G and giant slalom. Add his three second places in downhill, and it becomes clear why Odermatt is widely expected to finally collect silverware at the worlds on senior level, five years after winning five golds at the 2018 junior championships in Davos.
After sitting out the 2021 event with a knee injury, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde continues his quest for a first career world championship medal, a year after winning silver and bronze at the Beijing Olympics. The Norwegian speed specialist missed the podium in all 12 of his races at the worlds since 2015, though he came agonizingly close as he finished three-hundredths of a second behind bronze medalist Manuel Osborne-Paradis in the 2017 super-G. The leading Norwegian speed skier since the retirement of Aksel Lund Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud, Kilde won the World Cup discipline titles in both downhill and super-G in 2021-22.
Named after Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, it’s no wonder Vincent Kriechmayr prefers a more elegant style of skiing over a simple powerful approach. Kriechmayr has four medals from nine starts at the world championships. In 2021, he became the first Austrian skier in 22 years to win the speed double at worlds — gold in downhill and super-G. That feat might be hard to replicate in Courchevel, although Kriechmayr won both speed races when the French resort hosted the World Cup finals last season. He also triumphed in a downhill in Kitzbuehel last month, probably the biggest confidence booster for an Austrian skier.
Since his World Cup debut in 2018, Lucas Braathen has been a whirlwind appearance in men’s skiing — on and off the slopes. Son of a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother, the eccentric Braathen runs his own fashion line and likes to show off his dancing skills as well as his painted fingernails. He missed the 2021 worlds after knee surgery and failed to finish both his events at last year’s Olympics. But after racking up six podiums, including three wins, in the current World Cup season, he is a definite medal threat in both slalom and GS — provided he recovers in time from surgery for appendicitis he underwent shortly before the worlds.
In 2015, Henrik Kristoffersen was raising his tally of gold medals from junior world championships to six, although he had already competed at two senior championships by then. The Norwegian has since racked up 30 World Cup wins but had to wait until 2019 for his first medal from a major championship, winning gold in GS at the worlds in Sweden. The two-time Olympic medalist fought, and many times lost, countless battles against record overall champion Marcel Hirscher. Going into his sixth world championships, Kristoffersen has now teamed up with his former rival from Austria, using skis from the brand Hirscher founded after his retirement in 2019.
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