It Begins - Athletes Ready For Season Opener
It all comes down to this. Equipment testing is done, gym work completed, techniques honed. Now, on Saturday, 25 October at 10:00 CET the 2025/26 Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup season gets underway in Sölden, Austria. A season that contains the added, irresistible lure of an Olympic Winter Games.
“We are all nervous balls of anxiety,” Mikaela Shiffrin (USA/Atomic) said with a laugh recently.
The megastar with a record 101 World Cup victories to her name will be among those chasing a perfect start in the women’s Giant Slalom on the famed Rettenbach glacier.
The race is set to offer Shiffrin observers – and there are lots of those – plenty to chew over. The 30-year-old may have won more World Cup GS races than any other woman in history (22) and have 2018 Olympic and 2023 World Championship gold to her name in the discipline, but she still comes into the season-opener seeking answers.
A traumatic puncture wound suffered when leading the women’s World Cup GS race in Killington, USA last November put Shiffrin on the sidelines for two months, and left her searching for confidence and form on her return.
"I have been prioritising GS trying to get as much repetition in GS as possible, and I have done quite a lot more volume in GS than in past years. I am prioritising that over everything else," Shiffrin told the Associated Press during the off-season.
"My confidence is getting better - generally I feel more comfortable, and more able to accept the speed.”
That is what Shiffrin’s legions of fans want to hear. December 2023 in Lienz was the last of her 22 World Cup wins and another triumph on Austrian snow would no doubt be welcomed by the thousands preparing to party at the traditional curtain-raiser.
The sad absence of Federica Brignone (ITA/Rossignol) – who broke multiple bones in her left leg and tore her ACL just weeks after finishing last season as the Overall, GS, and Downhill World Cup champion – certainly opens the door to Shiffrin. Although there are others who might feel like they are closer to the front of that particular queue.
Alice Robinson (NZL/Salomon) and Sara Hector (SWE/Head) both pushed Brignone all the way last season and will be looking to kick on.
No one was more consistent than the still young New Zealander. On the podium in seven out of nine World Cup GS races, Robinson not only grabbed her first win in almost four years, she also broke through on the biggest of stages, claiming her nation’s first ever Alpine Ski World Championship medal with GS silver at Saalbach 2025.
A likely battle between the 23-year-old and Hector, 10 years her senior, may well be a season highlight. The Swede has made the podium in at least four GS World Cup races in all four seasons since winning Olympic GS gold in Beijing in 2022. A record that not even Shiffrin can match.
Unlike Robinson – the 2019 winner – Hector is yet to triumph in Sölden, with a best result of fourth in 2023.
No such issues for another familiar name. No one in history has better memories to draw on down the Rettenbach Glacier than Lara Gut-Behrami SUI/Head). A winner in 2013, 2016 and 2023, the 34-year-old has one final chance to draw clear of Tina Maze (SLO) as Sölden’s most successful female GS skier.
Fresh from announcing her intention to retire at the end of the season, Gut-Behrami will no doubt line-up full of motivation, and in good form. World Cup Finals winner in March, the Swiss veteran also claimed two second-place finishes in her final five GS races last season.
Add on the fact the 2026 Olympic piste in Cortina D’Ampezzo is one of Gut-Behrami’s favourites – she took World Championship gold in GS and the Super G there in 2021 – and the portents are good for one of the all-time greats to bring down her career curtain in fine style.
Although there are several youngsters ready to flip the script and usher in a new era. The 18-year-old Lara Colturi (ALB/Blizzard) just beat 21-year-old Zrinka Ljutic (CRO/Atomic) to the title of youngest skier to appear on a GS World Cup podium last season. And both will be looking to grab a maiden win this time out.
Ljutic is certainly pumped to transfer her Slalom World Cup title winning form on to the Rettenbach.
"It’s a long hill, it’s technically very challenging. It’s also at very high altitude, it’s a good wake-up call I would say to open up the season. And there’s so much tension, I would say much more tension than any other World Cup race. Everyone comes super fresh and just excited from a long summer break. It’s very hyped. But that’s what’s cool about it." said Zrinka Ljutic
While the nerves are almost visible on the streets on Sölden, there is no stopping, even at this stage, minds drifting towards early February 2026.
“I think about it but I do not feel the pressure yet,” a laughing Marta Bassino (ITA/Head) said of the looming Milano Cortina Olympic Games.
With Brignone uncertain as to whether she will make it back for her home Games, Italian eye will turn towards Bassino. The GS World Cup champion in 2020/21 has struggled on the technical skis since that golden season, but a change of ski manufacturer has given the 29-year-old a new spring in her step.
“I started a new chapter of my life with these new skis,” Bassino said. “Ski training in Ushuaia (Argentina) went really, really well. “For sure it’s (the Olympic Games) a goal. We will see how the season goes. I will try to arrive there well prepared.”
For the men the question is can anyone stop Marco Odermatt (SUI/Stöckli)? The bare numbers would appear to suggest not. Especially in Giant Slalom. Afterall, the Swiss king has claimed a remarkable 24 of the past 37 Audi FIS World Cup GS races.
But from pioneering Brazilian Lucas Pinheiro Braathen (Atomic) to the effervescent trio of Attacking Vikings; Henrik Kristoffersen (NOR/Van Deer), Atle Lie McGrath (NOR/Head) and Timon Haugan (NOR/Van Deer) via the recently crowned GS world champion Raphael Haaser (AUT/Atomic) not to mention Odermatt’s own teammates, Loic Meillard (Rossignol) and Thomas Tumler (Stöckli) there is a growing list of top class challengers ready to rip up the rulebook when the new season begins on Sunday, 26 October at 10:00 CET in Sölden, Austria.
The Norwegians were quick to pounce when Odermatt let his remarkable standards slip last season, and the Attacking Vikings will no doubt be keen on grabbing another fast start this time around.
They will sadly be missing the injured Alexander Steen Olsen (Rossignol), who led home a Norwegian podium-sweep 12 months ago. But in the indefatigable Kristoffersen they have a priceless team leader. The 31-year-old followed up a first GS World Cup win in three years in Kranjska Gora in March with the Slalom Globe, secured in style at the World Cup Finals. Add on a likely boost from his recent marriage and Odermatt will know he has a serious rival on his hands.
In the ever-improving Haugan – three top-10s in his final six GS races of last season – and McGrath – third behind Kristoffersen in Sölden a year ago – Kristoffersen has fine teammates too.
At times it was the Norway v Switzerland show in men’s GS last season, with the two nations sharing 20 of the 36 World Cup medals on offer (eight for Norwegians and 12 for the Swiss). And two men in particular will be keen to continue to show that Odermatt is not the only racer in red.
Meillard might just be the most in-form male skier right now. Check this out for a way to finish a season: three wins in his final six World Cup races, including two in GS, plus two golds (Slalom and Team Combined) and a bronze in GS at the Saalbach 2025 World Championships.
No wonder Odermatt picked him last season as the man most likely to challenge him for the Overall title. While Meillard’s slow start made that too far out of reach, perhaps this is the season the 28-year-old will finally grab his first Globe?
Teammate Tumler knows just what it is like to peak late. The 35-year-old waited until his 124th World Cup start to grab a first ever win, triumphing in the Beaver Creek GS last season. He followed it up with world championship silver in the GS, a race in which Odermatt could only finish fourth.
World champion Haaser is another out to show that he can add consistency to an undoubted ability to rise to the biggest of occasions. Despite having never won a World Cup race, the Austrian is now the proud owner of a full set of world championship medals – GS gold and Super G silver from Saalbach 2025 and Alpine combined bronze from Courchevel Meribel 2023.
Could he be the man to snatch a first home crowd triumph in Sölden since the great Marcel Hirscher (Van Deer) sent the masses wild in 2014?
“It’s an amazing feeling, I am happy about my last season but already looking forward to the next one,” Haaser said, before admitting he is not entirely sure what fuelled his late surge last season: “Hard to say? Maybe the long break without skiing from the middle of December to end of January?”
Teammates Marco Schwarz (Atomic) Patrick Feurstein (Rossignol) and Stefan Brennsteiner (Fischer) will be hoping it is them who can end the Austrian drought.
The green, yellow and blue of Brazil have yet to be seen at the top of a World Cup podium, but surely it cannot be long now. Pinheiro Braathen, the World Cup Slalom champion in 2023, looked better and better as last season progressed, twice missing out on that elusive top spot by less than half-a-second.
Now preparing to launch what he happily calls the “biggest season of my career”, the 25-year-old cannot wait to get started.
"Sölden is extremely special. A lot of uncertainty across the whole industry, whether that is the ski brands, the athletes, the staff, the federation, probably you guys at FIS as well and I think that’s the excitement that the fans get to feel and get to experience." said Lucas Pinheiro Braathen
Despite all of this however, Odermatt undoubtedly remains the man to beat. The reigning Olympic GS champion is going for his fifth consecutive GS Globe, a feat that would tie him with Ted Ligety (USA) on the all-time list, behind only Hirscher (six) and Swedish icon Ingemar Stenmark (seven).
Odermatt also has Hirscher in his sights on the all-time GS World Cup wins list. Six more victories will push him past the man hoping to make a comeback from injury soon.
Asked recently to number the top-10 male skiers in history, Odermatt modestly put himself fifth. Should the coming season look like the last few, he might have to soon recalibrate that list.
