Kilde and Goggia the Ones to Watch This Exciting Ski Weekend
The 2022/23 FIS season hits its busiest and most exciting stage this week. The FIS Alpine Ski World Cup’s finest racers will arrive in the pearl of the Alps, Wengen, to contest three races. A Super-G will take place on Friday, the famous Downhill race will be staged on Saturday, and there is a Slalom on Sunday.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde training on the Lauberhorn earlier this week. ©GettyImages
Wengen’s speed events are contested on the famous Lauberhorn. It is the longest World Cup downhill ski course in the world. It is also the oldest. Making its debut in 1930, Wengen raced throughout World War II thanks to Switzerland’s neutral military status.
Kriechmayr Seeking Third Wengen Win
The Downhill in Wengen is Alpine Skiing’s marquee event. The race attracts tens of thousands of spectators. And its global television audience is measured by the tens of millions. All are spellbound by the 4.5-kilometer course that drops by over 1,000 meters from start to finish. It also features jaw-dropping 90 percent inclines in places.
Austria’s Vincent Kriechmayr won this contest 12 months ago. He also won the race in 2019. On Saturday, he will attempt to become the first three-time winner on the Downhill Lauberhorn course since 1958.
Kriechmayr won the Bormio Downhill between Christmas and the New Year. But Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde has been the outstanding Downhiller of the 2022/23 season and will start as the bookies’ favorite on Saturday. The defending World Cup Downhill champion has already claimed race victories at Lake Louise, Beaver Creek, and Val Gardena.
Heroics from the Outstanding Goggia
As part of a hectic schedule, FIS officials will be dispatched to seven locations over the weekend. And live action will be broadcast on Eurosport from many of the following events:
- January 13: FIS Alpine Wengen, Switzerland
- January 13: FIS Ski Jumping Zao, Japan
- January 14: FIS Alpine Wengen, Switzerland
- January 14: FIS Alpine St. Anton, Austria
- January 14: FIS Ski Jumping Zao, Japan
- January 14: FIS Ski Jumping Zakopane, Poland
- January 14: FIS Nordic Combined Klingenthal, Germany
- January 14: FIS Snowboard Kreischberg, Austria
- January 14: FIS Alpine Snowboard Scuol, Switzerland
- January 15: FIS Alpine Wengen, Switzerland
- January 15: FIS Alpine St. Anton, Austria
- January 15: FIS Ski Jumping Zao, Japan
- January 15: FIS Ski Jumping Zakopane, Poland
- January 15: FIS Nordic Combined Klingenthal, Germany
The St Anton races are a Downhill and a Super-G on the women’s Alpine tour. They will not feature Mikaela Shiffrin – the American who needs one more race victory to become the most successful female skier of all time. But Sofia Goggia, the outstanding Downhill racer of 2022/23 – and three other seasons when she won the Downhill World Cup title – will be in action.
The Italian stunned fans and earned plaudits when racing and winning in St Moritz a week before Christmas. Remarkably, the 30-year-old had broken her hand the day beforehand, and she had undergone surgery on her injury just hours before the contest.
Her hand – now featuring an additional metal plate and nine screws – had been set in plaster and to it, Goggia’s ski pole was affixed using duct tape. Irrefutable proof professional winter sports athletes are cut from a different cloth?
