COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. (AP) — Swiss ski star Marco Odermatt started the World Cup super-G season with a Thanksgiving win at Copper Mountain on Thursday, while Aleksander Aamodt Kilde reduced fiancée Mikaela Shiffrin to tears by making his comeback after nearly two years out.
Odermatt has already won the opening giant slalom — at Sölden in the Austrian Alps last month — in what is an ominous start to the season by the world’s best men’s skier leading
up to the Milan Cortina Olympic Games in February.
The Colorado course is hosting men’s World Cup races for just the second time, after 1975-76, and it was the stage for another strong run by Odermatt, who still needed to make up time in the final section to overhaul Vincent Kriechmayr and win by 0.08 seconds.
It denied Austria a clean sweep, with Raphael Haaser a further 0.05 back in third and Stefan Babinsky in finishing fourth.
Odermatt, the defending overall champion, has won the crystal globe for the season-long title in super-G for the past three years.
For much of that time, Kilde — the 2020 overall champion and winner of 21 World Cup races — has been on the sidelines because of the effects of injuries sustained in a horrifying downhill crash in January 2024.
Nearly 700 days later, Kilde was back racing — and it was all too much for Shiffrin, the U.S. skiing great, who was in the crowd and weeping as he crossed the line 1.25 seconds adrift of Odermatt.
The 33-year-old Kilde wound up tied for 24th place and was given a big hug by the emotional Shiffrin minutes after getting down the hill. She later took a photo of Kilde with Odermatt, who was congratulating the Norwegian on his return to competition.
Kilde underwent surgery for a severe cut and nerve damage in his right calf and two torn ligaments in his shoulder after the crash at the classic Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen. He has since said his leg will never be the same again and that there is limited in movement in his shoulder.
Given that backdrop, it was an encouraging display by Kilde on a course that is well known to most of the speed racers because it’s been frequented as a training site by all of the top teams in recent years.
It was the first of nine super-Gs in a season interrupted by the Olympics. Beaver Creek in the United States hosts the second race next month.
It was a 47th World Cup victory for Odermatt, and his 16th in super-G.
According to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, it was Odermatt's 26th podium finish in super-G, tying him for third place with Norway's Kjetil Jansrud on the men’s all-time list behind Hermann Maier and Aksel Lund Svindal.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
