Alpine skiing-One last chance: Odermatt chases gold in giant slalom showdown
BORMIO, Italy, Feb 13 : Two souvenirs - one silver and one bronze - would send most Olympians home happy. Unless, of course, your name happens to be Marco Odermatt.
In the build-up to the Milano-Cortina Olympics the question many were asking was how many gold medals the 28-year-old Swiss might claim on Bormio's fabled Stelvio.
Instead, it is Odermatt's young teammate Franjo von Allmen who has stolen the show by winning a magnificent treble in the downhill, team combined and super-G.
Odermatt, the dominant force in men's Alpine ski racing for the past five seasons and holder of 53 World Cup wins across multiple disciplines, has one more chance to strike gold in Saturday's giant slalom, the event he won at Beijing 2022.
Even if he wins on Saturday in a race that is likely to be wide open, Odermatt will surely return with a tinge of disappointment having finished fourth in the race he had really prioritised, the downhill.
He shrugged that off to claim a silver in the combined alongside Loic Meillard, and he was third in the super-G. A giant slalom win would complete the medal set.
"I'm satisfied, but not overjoyed," Odermatt, who is on course to win the World Cup overall title for a fifth successive season, said after Wednesday's super-G. "I missed my clear goal of winning gold."
It means the pressure will be on for Saturday's two-legged technical event.
"Ultimately, he's human too," Italy's 11-time World Cup-winning slalomist Giorgio Rocca told Swiss website tio.ch looking ahead to the race.
"He's always up there among the best, but he's probably not as mentally relaxed today and can't ski as he'd like. When he wants to push, that instinct that usually comes easily to him probably comes a little less easily today."
Giant slalom is considered a pure discipline, testing a skier's all-round skills, and Odermatt has won 29 GS races at World Cup events, including three of the seven this season.
He will be the favourite but will face some stiff opposition from the likes of teammate Meillard, Norway-born Brazilian Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, Austrian Stefan Brennsteiner, American River Radamus and charging Norwegians Henrik Kristoffersen, Atle Lie McGrath and Timon Haugan.
The Stelvio slope was designed for speed events and while the giant slalom course will be more demanding than the one for Monday's slalom, it will be relatively comfortable for the world's best, and multiple skiers will feel they have a chance.
History could be made if Pinheiro Braathen, who quit the Norwegian team in 2023 before returning a year later in the colours of Brazil, his mother's birthplace, brings his form on the World Cup to Bormio.
The flamboyant 25-year-old is strongly fancied to deliver South America's first Winter Olympics medal with good chances in both the giant slalom and the slalom.
He became the first Brazilian to win a World Cup race this season in Levi, but an Olympic medal would dwarf that.
"Honestly, the pressure is very high," he said. "I represent more than 200 million Brazilians, and I am the athlete with the greatest chance and opportunity to bring home a medal.
"It's the kind of pressure you harness to reach your highest potential, and that is the state in which you can shine."
Should he do so, caipirinha cocktails and samba will be the order of the day in Bormio's bustling town centre.
