Steven Lee is an Australian alpine skier. He competed in the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Winter Olympics, and had a competitive career lasting just on 25 years. He is the second of only 3 Australian skiers ever to claim victory on the Alpine World Cup circuit. He has also done sports commentating for channels 7, 9 and 10, co-owns Chill Factor magazine, and is a national selector and president of Falls Creek Race Club. He has worked in movies with Roger Moore and Jackie Chan.
Elena Fanchini was an Italian World Cup alpine ski racer. Born in Val Camonica, she focused on the speed events of downhill and super-G. Her younger sisters Nadia and Sabrina also raced on the Italian team.
Lara Gut-Behrami is a Swiss World Cup alpine ski racer who competes in all disciplines and specializes in the speed events of downhill and Super-G. She won the gold medal in the super-G event at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. With 45 World Cup victories to her name across 3 disciplines, she is one of the all time greats in Alpine skiing.
Jenny Owens is an Australian alpine and freestyle skier, who competed in multiple Winter Olympic Games, including 2002, 2010, and 2014 Games. Owens also competed in the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships twice and the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships twice. She competed for six years on the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup tour and nine years on FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup. She has competed in four Winter X Games, winning the bronze medal in the SkierX in 2012. Owens was a member of the Australian alpine team for seven years, followed by nine years as a member of the ski cross team.
Herbert Plank is a former Italian alpine skier who competed in the 1976 Winter Olympics and in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Christina Weirather is a retired Liechtensteiner World Cup alpine ski racer. She won a bronze medal in Super-G for Liechtenstein at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Dominik Paris is an Italian alpine ski racer, who specializes in speed events of super-G and downhill. He was the world champion in super-G, as the gold medalist in 2019 at Åre, Sweden.
The Arlberg-Kandahar race is an annual alpine skiing event. The first edition of the race was held in 1928 in St. Anton, in the Arlberg district of Austria. The location originally alternated between St. Anton and Mürren, Switzerland. Later, it began to be held in other locations as well, such as Chamonix, France, Sestriere, Italy, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Sofia Goggia is an Italian World Cup alpine ski racer who competes in all disciplines and specialises in the speed events of downhill and super-G. She is a two-time Olympic downhill medalist — gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics, the first one for an Italian woman — and four-time World Cup downhill title winner.
Nina Ortlieb is an Austrian World Cup alpine ski racer, and specializes in the speed events of downhill and super-G. She is the daughter of Patrick Ortlieb, the Olympic gold medalist in downhill in 1992 and world champion in 1996.
The women's downhill in the 2021 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of seven events. The original schedule had called for eight downhills, but the World Cup finals race was canceled.
The women's super-G in the 2021 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of 6 events, with one cancellation from the scheduled seven. Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami won four of the first five Super-Gs to establish an 195-point lead over Swiss teammate and defending discipline champion Corinne Suter with only two races to go, and she clinched the discipline title for 2021 after the sixth event, which turned out to be the last one for the season.
The women's overall in the 2021 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup involved 31 events in 5 disciplines: downhill (DH), Super-G (SG), giant slalom (GS), slalom (SL), and parallel (PAR). The sixth discipline, Alpine combined (AC), had all three of its events in the 2020–21 season cancelled, The tentative women's season schedule included 37 events, but the final women's schedule cut the number of events to 34 due to the continuing disruption cased by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the changes were the elimination of the three Alpine combined races to eliminate the mixing of speed skiers and technical skiers in those events, as well as the elimination of two of the three parallels in favor of other races. Ultimately, only three of the races in this schedule -- one downhill, one Super-G, and one giant slalom -- were canceled during the season, as discussed later.
The women's downhill in the 2022 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of nine events including the finals. Defending champion Sofia Goggia of Italy, who won four of the five downhills in which she competed in 2020-21, continued her domination in 2021-22 by again winning four of the first five downhills. Goggia took a commanding lead in the discipline after American Breezy Johnson, who finished second in each of the first three downhills, missed the rest of the season with a knee injury. Goggia then suffered her own knee injury, including a broken bone and ligament tears, while training for the last downhill prior to the 2022 Winter Olympics, but she was able to continue competing within a month and, after all but the final race of the season, had such a commanding lead that only one other competitor even had a theoretical possibility of overtaking her. At the finals, Suter failed to score, and Goggia won her second consecutive discipline championship.
The women's super-G in the 2022 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of nine events including the final. Although no Italian woman had ever won the super-G championship, the battle in 2021-22 was between three of them: speed specialists Sofia Goggia and Elena Curtoni plus 2020 overall champion Federica Brignone. Through the first six races, Curtoni had won one, and each of the others had won two. However, Goggia was injured in a crash in the sixth race, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, and missed the next set of speed races as well as the super-G in the 2022 Winter Olympics. The seventh race, which was held days before the Winter Olympics, was skipped by many of the other top competitors, but was won by Brignone, enabling her to open a sizable lead in the discipline, and Brignone was able to clinch the season championship in the next Super-G when neither Curtoni nor Goggia scored points.
The men's downhill in the 2022 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup included eleven events including the final. A scheduled downhill on 5 December 2021 at Beaver Creek, Colorado was cancelled due to bad weather, but after several abortive attempts to run it at other venues, it was finally added to Kvitfjell on March 4, the day before the previously-scheduled race.
The International Ski Federation (FIS) Alpine Ski World Cup is the premier circuit for alpine skiing competition. The inaugural season launched in January 1967, and the 2022–23 season marks the 57th consecutive year for the FIS World Cup.
The women's downhill in the 2023 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of nine events, including the final. The original schedule called for eleven events, but the first two races of the season scheduled for 5 and 6 November 2022 in Zermatt/Cervinia, were canceled due to adverse weather conditions; the FIS decided not to reschedule them. Once the season began, a downhill scheduled in St. Anton on 14 January had to be converted into a Super-G due to the inability to hold a pre-race training run on either of the two days prior to the downhill. However, a subsequent Super-G scheduled at Cortina d'Ampezzo was converted into a downhill, restoring the original schedule.
The women's super-G in the 2023 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup included eight events, including the final. The original schedule called for nine events, but a scheduled downhill at St. Anton on 14 January was converted to a super-G due to the inability to hold pre-race practice runs on either of the two days prior to the event. A later super-G at Cortina was converted into a downhill to restore the original schedule balance, but then a downhill at Crans Montana on 25 February had to be delayed a day due to fog and dangerous course conditions, and the super-G previously scheduled for that day was cancelled and not rescheduled.
The women's downhill in the 2024 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of eight events, including the final. The tentative schedule called for eleven events, but a new event, the team combined, which was scheduled for 16 February 2024 in Crans Montana, was cancelled and converted into an additional downhill on the final schedule, increasing the planned schedule to twelve. However, as discussed below in the season summary, cancellations reduced that number during the season. The season champion was Cornelia Hütter of Austria, ending a string of three straight season triumphs by Sofia Goggia of Italy, who was injured just after the midpoint of the season but still finished third.
