'Perfect' Odermatt roars to men’s downhill gold

After a World Championships jam-packed with surreal results, some semblance of normality was finally restored to Courchevel at the men’s downhill on Sunday.

Marco Odermatt (SUI), the season’s leading male skier, delivered an imperious performance to win his first World Championships medal – pushing Aleksander Aamodt Kilde (NOR), with whom he has duelled all term, into second place.

This was Odermatt’s first major downhill triumph: the Swiss star has clocked seven World Cup second places in the discipline, often behind the Norwegian. But his flow and soft, controlled turns, on an icy, shady course riddled with blind rises and hard-to-see bumps, were close to perfection.

He wept tears of joy as Kilde, the favourite and his great friend, came in +0.48 seconds behind. Kilde has been victorious in five of the eight World Cup downhills this season, and was his usual supercharged self, but his arcs were not quite as flawless as Odermatt’s on this treacherous piste.

“It was for me the perfect run, maybe the best downhill I have ever showed,” said Odermatt.

“We did another great battle, I guess. But just one can win. He [Kilde] would deserve the gold medal as well, but today it was on my side.

“I felt it was a perfect run, when you look and you know some fast skiers had already been down, I knew it was good."

Kilde now has two silver medals at these championships, having been pipped by +0.01 seconds by Crawford in the super-G – but continued to show good grace despite missing the top step in his key event.

“I tried my best, but being one of the favourites, you have a lot of pressure,” he said.

“Also, I knew that Odermatt had delivered something really, really good. So I tried to charge as hard as I could. I messed up a couple of turns and that cost me.

“But it’s still quite incredible, and the way I feel now is super. I really tested myself. For sure Marco and I will battle for the rest of the season and I will keep trying to beat him.

"He is a hard nut to crack. In downhill, I’ve been in front of him until today, but that is all a part of it.”

With downhill behemoths Beat Feuz (SUI) and Mattihas Mayer (AUT) retired, this particular World Championships podium always looked open to newcomers.

It seemed like James Crawford (CAN), who won the super-G on Wednesday, might grab another extraordinary medal, after a calm, muscular run – but then his Canadian teammate Alexander, pushing to the very limits, somehow bested it.

Alexander has previously managed one major podium, winning a World Cup downhill in Kvitfjell, Norway, in March 2022.

“I’m so happy with the approach I brought today,” said Alexander. “I made a couple of mistakes, but that happens sometimes. I was just trying to push the whole way, to not think and just go. When you bring that approach, it is fast. You can make mistakes but that’s ski racing.

“I was hanging on a bit, but if you feel like that, you know you are going fast. I was yelling at myself, ‘hold on to this’.”

The medal caps a great week for the Canadian team. “We are all pushing each other, every day,” said Alexander.

“We are super competitive with each other but we are close friends, too. Seeing Jack [Crawford] win was great, and I’ll give him a little bit of credit for my motivation today. But all of us are feeling good.”

With the pressure now off Odermatt, he will enter his favourite event, the giant slalom, on Friday, full of confidence.