Will Odermatt win World Championship gold for the 4th time?

The defending champion is the top favorite in the giant slalom

Will he bite his teeth out against the competition? Marco Odermatt starts the giant slalom as the top favorite and is aiming for his fourth World Championship gold

Keystone

Marco Odermatt starts as the big favorite in the World Championship giant slalom on Friday. The defending champion faces competition mainly from Norway and his own camp.

Keystone-SDA

14.02.2025, 05:00•14.02.2025, 07:22

There was great excitement when Marco Odermatt was eliminated in the first two giant slaloms of the season. Over the course of the season, the 27-year-old from Nidwalden failed to finish in three races in a row. Something we were not used to seeing from the dominator of recent years. While the public panicked, he remained calm, at least outwardly.

Strong reaction

And rightly so, as the period between his retirement in Beaver Creek and the World Championship giant slalom in Saalbach shows. In four races, he stood on the podium four times, three times at the top. Odermatt has long been leading the giant slalom rankings again with a familiar cushion. The defending champion is accordingly confident in the Glemmtal. He deliberately skipped the team combined, which was so successful from a Swiss perspective, and put his full focus on the giant slalom after the downhill, which was disappointing for him.

Odermatt has stood on the podium at the World Championships three times so far - always at the top. With a fourth gold medal, he would draw level with Pirmin Zurbriggen.

Strong competition

The Norwegians want to challenge him for the title, especially Alexander Steen Olsen, the two-time winner of the season and Junior World Champion from 2022. Henrik Kristoffersen would be only too happy to spit in Odermatt's soup and celebrate his second World Championship title in the basic discipline after 2019.

But Odermatt also faces danger from within his own camp. Thomas Tumler celebrated his first World Cup victory in Beaver Creek at the age of 35 and has fond memories of Saalbach: last winter, he finished third on the podium at the World Cup venue in the season finale. Back then, Loïc Meillard, a Swiss skier, stepped into the breach when Odermatt dropped out and missed out on a perfect season with ten wins in ten races. The French-Swiss racer is likely to go into the start with correspondingly good feelings, especially as he won gold in the team combination together with downhill world champion Franjo von Allmen.

Luca Aerni completes the Swiss line-up. Justin Murisier will miss the race due to knee problems.