Lara Gut-Behrami wins overall Alpine Ski World Cup title, breaking age record

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Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami is the oldest woman to win the Alpine Ski World Cup overall, breaking an eight-year record to win the biggest ski race prize of the year.

Gut-Behrami, 32, mathematically clinched his second overall title on Sunday with just two races remaining in the 39-race season.

The overall ranking takes into account the results of all races – downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom – and crowns the world’s best overall alpine skier.

Gut-Behrami was trailing five-time overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin by 420 points when Shiffrin crashed on the downhill on January 26th.

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Shiffrin missed the next 11 races with a leg injury.

Gut-Behrami won five of those races and advanced to the four-race World Cup final with a 282-point lead over Italy’s Federica Brignone.

Both athletes missed Saturday’s season-opening slalom competition, which is also not regularly raced.

That meant Brignone needed to win the remaining three races (Sunday’s giant slalom, next week’s super-G and downhill) and Gut-Behrami needed to finish inside the top 13 in every race.

Brignone won Sunday’s GS, but Gut-Behrami finished 10th in Saalbach, Austria, clinching the overall victory.

Gut-Behrami, a two-time 2009 World Championship silver medalist aged 17, won his first overall title in 2015-16.

The following year, she suffered a season-ending torn anterior cruciate ligament due to a torn meniscus in her left knee while warming up for the World Championships, but she finished second in the overall standings behind Shiffrin and won her first overall victory that season.

Gut-Behrami won his first World Championship title in 2021 and his first Olympic gold medal in 2022.

Fellow Swiss Freni Schneider was the oldest woman to win the overall title in 1995 at the age of 30.

Austrian Stefan Eberhalter was the only Alpine skier older than Gut-Behrami, who won the overall championship in 2002 and 2003 at the ages of 32 and 33.