The first of two World Cup downhill runs in Cortina d’Ampezzo was marked by several falls. They join an unprecedented series of injuries this winter. Are there reasons for this?
Mikaela Shiffrin: It is still unclear how long she will be out.
Gabriele Facciotti / AP
It reads like the “Who’s Who” of skiing. And yet it’s not a list anyone wants to be on. A turbulent first of two descents this weekend adds two more prominent names to the current season’s long list of injuries: Mikaela Shiffrin and Corinne Suter, both of whom were transported by helicopter from the Olimpia delle Tofane in Cortina d’Ampezzo with knee pain.
The team of overall World Cup leaders Shiffrin soon gave a partial all-clear: initial examinations had revealed no tears in the anterior cruciate ligament or the collateral ligaments. Corinne Suter, who did not fall but braked immediately after landing after a jump and screamed in pain, was flown to Switzerland for medical clarifications, as Swiss Ski reported in the evening. A diagnosis is still pending. Michelle Gisin also feels pain in her lower leg after her fall.
If Shiffrin were to be out for the rest of the season, Marco Odermatt would soon be the last remaining star of the ski circuit in the second half of the season. It’s hard to imagine that there has ever been a comparable number of failures by the best skiers in one winter. In the last four weeks, Marco Schwarz and the former overall World Cup winners Alexis Pinturault, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Petra Vlhova have been unavailable.
Intensive program and weakened drivers
Although the knee is the focus everywhere except Kilde, a common cause or a common problem cannot be identified for the serious injuries. For the men, after the four downhill cancellations at the beginning of the season, the intensive racing weeks in Val Gardena/Gröden and Wengen, which arose from the catch-up races, were an issue. In retrospect, everyone in Wengen agreed that two training sessions and three speed races without a day off in between was too much. However, the drivers in particular put the criticism of the program into perspective: “At the beginning everyone was screaming for replacement races,” said the Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr.
Overload was also an issue for Schwarz and Kilde: Kilde was sick during the Wengen week. It is questionable whether it makes sense to start all three races on the longest route in the World Cup in this condition. Likewise with Marco Schwarz, who had decided to be the only athlete to drive every race. If he were him, many would have skipped Bormio and taken a break. However, he himself said in the hospital that he would do everything exactly the same again. In the case of Pinturault and Shiffrin, driving errors were the cause of the crashes, although Shiffrin at least had slight doubts after her illness at the beginning of January.
After the only training session in Cortina, she posted on X (formerly Twitter) that returning to downhill skiing had been a shock to her system. “I had a few scary moments on the slopes.” The five-time overall World Cup winner competed in her last speed races in St. Moritz in mid-December and skipped the following ones. In general, she masters the balance between an intensive program and necessary breaks excellently and regularly skips races so as not to overtax her body.
So happy to be back in @cortinaSkiWcup because I love it here…although yesterday was a little bit of a shock to the system being back on DH skis, and I had a couple “scary” moments on the course (probably didn’t look as scary…(cont.) pic.twitter.com/02Pnr7VQc8
— Mikaela Shiffrin (@MikaelaShiffrin) January 25, 2024
Lara Gut-Behrami: “Many are unsettled”
In Cortina she was one of twelve drivers who did not finish the race. Lara Gut-Behrami showed an extremely strong ride, only beaten by the Austrian Stephanie Venier, and was on the podium in a downhill for the first time since last March. The turbulent race with the many failures also kept the 32-year-old busy. In an interview with SRF she tried to find reasons for this. This shouldn’t be taken as criticism, she said, but rather as an explanation of the construction site that they all have to master.
“You think about so many things that you forget that skiing is the most important thing.” You perfect your set-up, analyze every curve, feel like you have to train when you have two days off and forget about recovery. “There are so many locations that many people are unsettled when they get to the start.” If, like this Friday in Cortina, the route is different than in training, faster, the jumps are further, you no longer have a plan. But you have to be ready to react to everything every time. Drive with intuition and instinct. “Maybe that’s missing a little: you’re looking for risk, you always want to risk everything, but you have to reach the goal first.”
The same tone was adopted by Federica Brignone, who also fell. «The route was perfect. We just got used to driving so many simple routes that are like wide highways. So we have to adapt when we find a difficult route,” said the Italian.
Depending on how long Shiffrin is out, the overall World Cup could come down to a duel between Gut-Behrami and Brignone: The American is 340 points ahead of Gut-Behrami, with Federica Brignone lurking another 82 points behind.
For Corinne Suter, however, the Tofana di Rozes remains the mountain of fate. In 2021 she became world champion in downhill and second in the World Championships in Super-G. In 2023 she fell badly, suffered a concussion among other things, and still stood on the World Cup podium three weeks later. Now she is seriously injured here again. In 2026 the route will play a starring role again – Cortina will host the women’s Olympic ski races.