The men's downhill in the 2025 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup is scheduled to consist of nine events, including the finals. Two-time discipline champion Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, who failed to repeat last season because he suffered life-threatening injuries on the Lauberhorn downhill course in January 2024, developed a shoulder infection at the surgical site over the summer and needed a second surgery, which caused him to miss the entire season, making defending discipline champion Marco Odermatt of Switzerland an overwhelming favorite to repeat as the season champion.[1]
The season was interrupted for the biennial Alpine Skiing World Championships in Saalbach, Austria during 4–16 February 2025.[2] The championship in men's downhill was held on Sunday, 9 February, and was dominated by the Swiss team, with young star Franjo von Allmen winning gold, teammate Alexis Monney taking bronze, and five Swiss skiers finishing in the top 12.[3]
Season summary
Downhill season began in early December 2024 at Beaver Creek (Colorado), USA with Swiss skier Justin Murisier winning his first-ever World Cup race in an upset over his Swiss teammate Marco Odermatt.[4] However, Odermatt bounced back to dominate the next downhill in Val Gardena.[5] In the third downhill, on the Stelvio course in Bormio, Odermatt made a mid race error that pushed him down to fifth, but two of his Swiss teammates (Alexis Monney and Franjo von Allmen) made up for it by taking the top two places, which gave the Swiss the top four places in the discipline standings for the season.[6] Once again, Odermatt bounced back to defeat Von Allmen on home snow in Wengen,[7] but then the Swiss downhill monopoly for the season was finally ended by Canada's James Crawford, with his first World Cup victory, in Kitzbühel, Austria.[8] The final race before the World Championships, scheduled in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, was cancelled when two straight days of fog caused both pre-race training runs to be cancelled, which meant that the downhill could not take place; the race was rescheduled for the first day at Kvitfjell.[9]
In the World Championships, von Allmen and Monney continued their meteoric rise, with von Allmen defeating home star Vincent Kriechmayr for the gold medal and Monney claiming the bronze, with Odermatt fifth.[3]
Finals
The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Saturday, 22 March 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho, United States.[10] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup slalom discipline and the winner of the Junior World Championship in the discipline, plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, are eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 earn World Cup points.
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