Women's Alpine season review: Brignone's brilliance, Shiffrin's century highlight spectacular campaign

From established stars making history to young guns climbing onto the podium and one or two surprises, the women's 2024/25 Audi FIS World Cup season was one to remember.

As the off-season begins, we look back at the athletes and moments that defined an extraordinary winter.

Triumph and tragedy for 'La Tigre'

For an ageless wonder, it was a season for the ages.

At 34, Federica Brignone (ITA/Rossignol) became the oldest woman to win a World Cup race in the season opener in Sölden in October, and then reset that record nine more times en route to a career-best 10-win season and three Crystal Globes.

The Italian veteran dominated the campaign, winning her second overall title by more than 300 points and adding the Downhill and Giant Slalom globes to her bulging trophy cabinet, as well as coming second in Super G.

Brignone won multiple times in all three of her disciplines, including claiming her first career World Cup Downhill victory in St. Anton in January, then backing it up with another in Garmisch later that month.

In between her World Cup successes, which saw her move into the top 10 on the all-time women's victory list, the all-rounder also found time to win Giant Slalom gold and Super G silver at the world championships in Saalbach in February.

"It’s been a crazy and amazing season for me," Brignone said after clinching the Giant Slalom globe in March. "I never thought that I was able to ski like that this year — it’s something magic."

Her spectacular season came to a devastating conclusion, however, as Brignone tore her ACL and broke multiple bones in her left leg in a crash at the Italian championships earlier this month.

After setting herself up to be one of the biggest home medal hopes at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, the evergreen star will now be racing the clock just to make it to the start gate next February.

Season of highs and lows for the GOAT ends with Dalmatians

Mikaela Shiffrin (USA/Atomic) began the season just three victories shy of becoming the first Alpine ski racer to win 100 World Cup races, and she wasted no time in reaching the threshold of history.

With triumphs in the first two Slalom races of the season in November, the American superstar seemed set to not only cruise to 100 wins, but to do it in front of her home fans in Killington on a double technical weekend.

In her first attempt at No. 100, the then 29-year-old led the Giant Slalom after the first run and was skiing with the green light late in the second run. However, she went down on her inside ski and suffered a puncture wound that not only put her century victory party on hold, but kept her off the circuit for two months.

When she returned at the end of January, a rusty Shiffrin came 10th in her first Slalom race and fifth at the world championships shortly thereafter — although she did manage to pick up a ninth world gold in the brand-new Team Combined event with Breezy Johnson (USA/Atomic).

Shiffrin's tentative return to Giant Slalom in a triple race weekend in Sestriere in late February, after what she termed "mental obstacles" with the discipline, resulted in a 25th and a DNQ, and 100 victories seemed a world away.

The following day, however, a clinical Shiffrin won the Sestriere Slalom to reach the hallowed century mark in her favourite discipline.

"I don't know that it's possible to dream about a milestone like this. It's too big, it's too long, it takes too much," the humble star said.

"I always dreamed about good turns and step by step, and try to be better tomorrow than I was today. And that dream for me is big enough."

For good measure, Shiffrin added another Slalom triumph at the World Cup Finals on home snow in Sun Valley the following month to take her tally to 101.

Anticipating that victory, some fans in the crowd dressed the part as the title characters from One Hundred and One Dalmatians to honor their hero reaching yet another milestone in her spectacular career.

Swiss superstar finally finds fun in the sun

After capturing three Crystal Globes — and narrowly missing out on a fourth — in 2023/24, Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI/Head) endured a difficult follow-up season by her incredibly high standards.

A knee injury at the beginning of the campaign ruled her out of Sölden and stalled her pre-season momentum, and she had trouble finding the rhythm on her skis for much of the winter.

After triumphing eight times the previous season, Gut-Behrami recorded only one victory heading into the World Cup Finals, also missing out on individual medals at the world championships.

Upon arriving in Sun Valley for the Finals, however, the 33-year-old managed to rediscover both the joy of her craft and her winning form, leading to victories in Super G and Giant Slalom, and the Super G Crystal Globe.

"Since I'm here (in Sun Valley) I finally found the happiness again of skiing, so it was just fun to ski and everything is easy when you're enjoying what you're doing," she said.

That GS triumph in her last race of the season made her the sixth woman to reach 100 Alpine skiing World Cup podiums and the first woman to record the 'triple-double': 10+ wins in three disciplines.

Heading into potentially her final year on tour in 2025/26, the Swiss superstar's late-season form sent a clear message to her rivals: she won't give up her Olympic Super G title without a fight.

The future is now: new stars arrive with a bang

With Shiffrin absent for much of the season and Olympic Slalom champion Petra Vlhova (SVK/Rossignol) missing all of it, the door was open for the next generation of technical skiers to rise to the occasion — and rise they did.

Zrinka Ljutic (CRO/Atomic) and Camille Rast (SUI/Head) headlined a new crop of exciting racers as they battled for Slalom spoils throughout the winter, with Ljutic claiming the Crystal Globe and Rast the world championships gold.

Both picked up their first World Cup wins early in the season and went from strength to strength thereafter, with the 21-year-old Croatian winning three times in Slalom to hold off Katharina Liensberger (AUT/Rossignol) and Rast for the season title.

"I had the wish, I saw myself able to compete for the globe, after last season — I had it somewhere in the back of my mind," Ljutic admitted. "Then at the end of the season I thought, 'Woah, it’s actually happening'."

The young guns didn't only show their prowess in technical events, however, as Lauren Macuga (USA/Rossignol) and Emma Aicher (GER/Head) also burst onto the scene to record debut World Cup triumphs on the speed circuit.

Macuga, 22, won the St. Anton Super G in January, while 21-year-old Aicher won a Downhill and a Super G in March, surprising even herself.

“In the speed disciplines, I was not expecting this at all," the talented all-rounder said. "I wanted to ski good, but I never thought I would be able to do this."

A legend returns to the World Cup, and to the podium

The next generation may already be here, but in an unlikely plot twist, so is the previous one.

In December, 82-time World Cup winner and 2010 Olympic Downhill gold medallist Lindsey Vonn (USA/Head) announced her return to elite ski racing at age 40 after nearly six years in retirement.

Skiing on a rebuilt knee, Vonn surpassed outside expectations early, finishing 14th in her first race back, then sixth and fourth in her next two outings.

She couldn't keep that improvement going in the following races, however, often matching the top skiers in individual sectors of races but being thwarted by mistakes, crashes and a frustrating lack of consistency.

All her hard work finally crystalized in her last race of the season, however, as Vonn finished second to Gut-Behrami in the Sun Valley Super G to record her 138th World Cup podium and first in over seven years.

"I finally put all the pieces together," she said after her podium performance. "This is where I knew I can be: I know I have the speed."

That speed will now be on hiatus, briefly, as Vonn and all the other Alpine skiing stars take a deep breath and a well-deserved break, before ramping up for next season with a singular focus.

In only six short months, one of the most anticipated women's ski racing seasons in recent memory will soar into action, with compelling narratives around every carving turn — and Olympic gold up for grabs.

Bring it on.