The women's super-G in the 2025 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of nine events, including the final.[1] A ninth race planned for St. Moritz, Switzerland was cancelled and not rescheduled until 1 March, when it was added as a second super-G at La Thuile on Thursday, 13 March.[2] The discipline did not open for the season until 15 December, 2024 in Beaver Creek, Colorado, United States. Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland, a five-time champion in the discipline, overwhelmingly won the final to capture her record sixth championship in the discipline (and third straight).
The season was interrupted for the Alpine Skiing World Championships, this time in Saalbach, Austria during 4–16 February 2025.[3] The championship in women's super-G was held on Thursday, 6 February and was won by the home nation's Stephanie Venier, who was ninth at the time in the season standings.
Season summary
The inaugural race of the season, run on the Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colorado, was won by Italy's Sofia Goggia in her returning weekend from a career-threatening knee injury suffered in February; defending discipline champion Lara Gut-Behrami from Switzerland finished second.[4] Back in Europe, in the first of two races at St. Moritz, four of the top five from the United States race were still in the top five, and one of them—Connie Hütter of Austria—pulled out the victory in front of the Swiss crowd, leaving Goggia and Gut-Behrami in a tie for the season lead with Hütter just ten points behind.[5] The second super-G was canceled due to strong winds and poor visibility.[6] In January, the next super-G was held in St. Anton, Austria, and while the buzz before the race was dominated by discussions about the return (at 40, after being retired for six years, and with a titanium knee joint) of five-time discipline champion Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who had placed 13th in her super-G return at St. Moritz and then placed 6th in her first downhill the day before,[7] the story after the race was Vonn's 22-year-old American teammate Lauren Macuga, who had worn a ski helmet with a "?" on it where a sponsor's name would normally be (because she didn't have one), but who achieved her first World Cup podium with her first World Cup win (with Vonn fourth).[8] After the race, Brignone, who finished third, led the overall World Cup standings, and Gut-Behrami, who finished fifth, led the discipline standings.[9] Brignone won the next super-G on home turf at Cortina to close the discipline deficit,[10] but on German soil at Garmisch, Gut-Behrami won the super-G and earned her 46th career World Cup victory, placing her fifth all-time among women, behind only two Americans (Mikaela Shiffrin and Vonn), an Austrian (Annemarie Moser-Pröll), and another Swiss woman (Vreni Schneider).[11]
In the World Championships at Saalbach, Austria, home favorite Stephanie Venier, who last medaled in the Worlds in 2017, pulled a huge upset to claim the gold over Brignone (second), with third tied between Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie and the U.S.'s Macuga.[12] In the first super-G after worlds at Kvitfjell, Norway, Brignone nipped Gut-Behrami by .06 seconds for the win, which closed the gap between them to 55 points.[13] Two weeks later at La Thuile, Italy, in the race rescheduled from St. Moritz, 21-year-old German Emma Aicher, who had recorded her first World Cup podium and first World Cup win in the two downhills at Kvitfjell two weeks earlier, recorded her first World Cup podium and win in super-G, with Brignone third and Gut-Behrami fourth, closing the gap by 10 more points to 45.[14] The next day, though, Aicher skied out while again leading, and Brignone won again (for her season-best third victory in the discipline) with Gut-Behrami again fourth, moving Brignone into a 5-point lead in the discipline with everyone else eliminated and just the finals remaining.[15]
Finals
The World Cup finals in the discipline took place on Sunday, 23 March 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho, United States.[16] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup slalom discipline and the winner of the Junior World Championship in the discipline (Jasmin Mathis of Switzerland), plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, were eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 earned World Cup points. No one with 500+ points and not otherwise eligible elected to start, and four eligible competitors (Stephanie Venier and Ricarda Haaser of Austria, both injured, and Ester Ledecká of Czechia and Mathis, both with scheduling conflicts) opted not to enter, leaving the starting field at 22. And Gut-Behrami blew away the field, winning the race by over a second to win the season championship for a record sixth time (2014, 2016, 2021, 2023-25; breaking Lindsey Vonn's record of five (2009-12, 2015)), with 40-year-old Vonn (capturing her first World Cup podium in over seven years, since 15 March 2018) in second and Brignone in third.[17]
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