Lucas Pinheiro Braathen: history for Brazil and South America

Earlier this month at Beaver Creek, Lucas Pinheiro Braathen became the first Brazilian to stand on the podium at a FIS Alpine Ski World Cup race. Not only that, when he celebrated his result with a snow samba, Pinheiro Braathen - born in Norway to a Brazilian mother - also became the first skier from South America to finish in the top three of an Alpine race at this level. 

The continent can make a claim to at least one World Cup triumph with Chilean-born Spaniard Carolina Ruiz Castillo winning the 2013 Meribel Downhill, almost 13 years after she was second in the Sestriere Giant Slalom. 

Before Pinheiro Braathen, the only skiers from the entire Southern Hemisphere to achieve podium finishes in the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup hailed from New Zealand and Australia. Furthermore, those two countries in Oceania are the only ones outside Europe, the United States, and Canada to boast World Cup race winners. 

While not in the Southern Hemisphere, Japan has had five different athletes on the podium but none on the top step. Akira Sasaki had three second places from 2003-06 with fellow men’s Slalom skier Tetsuya Okabe a runner-up back in March 1988. 

New Zealand and Australia lead the way for the Southern Hemisphere 

Claudia Riegler is the most successful Southern Hemisphere athlete in the history of the Alpine Ski World Cup. Born in Salzburg, Austria but representing the country of her mother’s birth, New Zealand, the Slalom specialist won four races in the space of just over a year from late January 1996. She also achieved four third-place finishes with her last coming in December 2002. 

Before Riegler, Annelise Coberger was the first Kiwi to make a World Cup podium in January 1992. Her first victory came two days later in Hinterstoder and, mere weeks after that, the Christchurch native - whose grandfather Oscar arrived in New Zealand from Bavaria in 1926 - became the first athlete from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Winter Olympic medal by taking Slalom silver in Albertville. Coberger came desperately close to securing the 1992-93 Slalom World Cup, but Vreni Schneider won the last two races in Sweden to snatch the title by just six points. 

The first skier from the Southern Hemisphere to make a World Cup podium was Malcolm Milne of Australia. Milne was 21 when he took the Val d’Isère Downhill in December 1969, making him the first non-European winner of a men’s World Cup Downhill. He followed that up by taking bronze behind Bernhard Russi at the World Championships in Val Gardena two months later. 

Manfred Grabler was the next Australian to make a World Cup podium. In the Zell Am See Downhill in his birth country of Austria in December 1973, Grabler was in a three-way tie for third place. 

Milne played his part in Australia’s second World Cup triumph when Steve Lee shared first place in the 1985 Furano Super G with Switzerland’s Daniel Mahrer. Milne mentored Lee who had earned six World Cup top-10 finishes before his trip to the top of the podium in Japan. 

Over 12 years later, Zali Steggall won the women’s Slalom at Park City, USA in her first race of the 1997-98 World Cup season. Steggall went on to become the first and, to date, only Southern Hemisphere skier to win World Championship gold at Vail in 1999. She is now the Member of the Australian Parliament for Warringah having defeated former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the 2019 General Election. 

Australia’s World Cup podium tally stands at six comprising three wins, one second place and two third-place finishes. New Zealand’s all-woman total of 27 includes eight victories with three of them achieved by current Southern Hemisphere trailblazer Alice Robinson. 

Having burst onto the scene with her second place at the Soldeu World Cup Finals in 2019 aged 18, Robinson stunned Mikaela Shiffrin to take the 2019-20 season-opener in Sölden. The Sydney-born Giant Slalom star won again later that season at Kranjska Gora and secured a third triumph at the Lenzerheide 2021 World Cup Finals. 

Robinson has had six second places since then, but one more win would see her match compatriot Riegler’s record of four for a skier from south of the equator.