2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's overall

The opening months (Oct. 2025 to Christmas)

With Brignone on hand for the traditional season-opening race in Sölden, Austria, 27-year-old Austrian skier Julia Scheib, who had finished third in the race last year for her first-ever World Cup individual podium, grabbed her first-ever World Cup victory, which also represented the first victory by an Austrian woman in a World Cup giant slalom race since March 2016.^[9] But five-time overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States (who missed most of last season with a serious puncture wound — but still won four races in her limited appearances, giving her an all-time record of 101 World Cup wins) showed that she was back at full strength in the season opening slalom at Levi, Finland, posting the fastest time in both runs, blowing out the field (with Lara Colturi of Albania second by over a second and a half, and the rest of the field over another second behind), and winning her ninth reindeer for her victory at Levi.^[10] Shiffrin's win, coupled with a fourth by Paula Moltzan (who finished second at Sölden), gave the United States the top two places in the overall season standings, with Colturi, a native Italian but naturalized Albanian, moving into third overall on her 19th birthday.^[11] The next weekend in Gurgl, Austria for another slalom, Shiffrin again dominated, defeating second-place Colturi by 1.23 seconds.^[12]

The World Cup races for both men and women then moved to the Western Hemisphere for the next two weeks, with the first two races, a giant slalom and a slalom, taking place at Copper Mountain (U.S.), which hadn't hosted the World Cup since 2001. Before the first race there, two-time overall champion (and defending super-G champion) Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland crashed during giant slalom training and tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a season-ending knee injury; prior to the injury, Gut-Behrami had planned to retire at the end of the season, but after the injury, she took more of a wait-and-see attitude about retirement.^[13] The next day, another training crash on the same slope by rising American speed star Lauren Macuga also tore her ACL, ending her season as well.^[14][15] Finally, in the giant slalom, Scheib almost pulled off a second straight victory, but instead New Zealand's Alice Robinson, the first run leader, held form and became the first woman not from Europe or North America to record five World Cup race victories.^[16] Remaining in North America for two giant slalom races at Tremblant (Canada), the first race saw Robinson pulling off a back-to-back victory by almost a second over Zrinka Ljutić of Croatia and becoming the discipline leader.^[17] The next day, Scheib bounced back (after crashing the first day) to claim her second giant slalom victory of the season by about half a second, although Shiffrin (who finished fourth) retained the overall lead and Robinson (who finished third) narrowly retained the discipline lead.^[18]

After returning to Europe for the official start of the speed season for women, with two downhills and a super-G at St. Moritz, Switzerland, two more training crashes sidelined more members of the Swiss team. First, Corinne Suter, the defending Olympic champion in downhill (and 2020 World Cup discipline champion in both downhill and super-G), tore a muscle in her left calf, bruised her left knee, and fractured a bone in her right foot, and so was forecast to be sidelined until at least mid-January 2026.^[19] Then, during the final official pre-race training run, two-time Olympic champion Michelle Gisin crashed and was airlifted to a hospital for spinal surgery; however, this surgery was also not expected to be season-ending.^[20][21] Finally, in the first of the two downhills, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who was directly behind Gisin in the final training run and thus was stopped and held on the course during the airlift, and who in March had become the oldest female ever to podium in a World Cup race (after a five-year retirement, but with new titanium implants in her right knee), won the race by almost a second for her 83rd career victory (44th in downhill) and thus became the oldest race winner, male or female, in World Cup history (breaking the record previously held by 37-year-old Didier Cuche on 24 February 2012 at a super-G in Crans-Montana).^[22] The following day in the second downhill, 22-year-old all-discipline German racer Emma Aicher was able to edge Vonn to prevent back-to-back victories, although Vonn did set a new all-time women's record with her 410th World Cup race (breaking the previous record of 409 by Renate Götschl).^[23] Finally, in the super-G, Robinson, the giant slalom discipline leader, edged France's Romane Miradoli, Italy's Sofia Goggia, and Vonn for her first-ever super-G victory, moving her up to just 64 points behind Shiffrin (who competed in her first super-G in almost exactly two years but missed the last gate, costing her a top-10 finish).^[24]

Despite the glitch in her super-G restart, Shiffrin's slalom domination remained unchanged, as she won the next race, a night slalom in Courcheval, France, by over 1.5 seconds once more, boosting her lead in the slalom standings to 180 points after just four races in the discipline and her lead in the overall standings back to 164 points.^[25] Later that week in a downhill at Val d'Isère, France, 2024 downhill champion Cornelia Hütter of Austria was the best in flat light conditions, edging past Germany's Kira Weidle-Winkelmann, the race's initial starter, and benefitting from mid-race errors by Vonn (who finished third) and Italy's Sofia Goggia, who dropped all the way back to eighth after being forced off the main track.^[26] In the next day's super-G, Goggia avoided a similar error and picked up her first victory of the season, with Robinson close behind in second (and closing to just 74 points behind Shiffrin, who skipped the race) and Vonn in third.^[27]

Midseason (Christmas to Winter Olympics)

Two days after Christmas, the women held two technical events in Semmering, Austria. In the giant slalom, Scheib won for the second time this season in front of a home crowd (and third time overall in the discipline), which enabled her to regain the discipline lead over Robinson, who failed to complete her first run; Shiffrin finished sixth and increased her overall lead to 114 points.^[28] In the second race, another night slalom, the first run took place on a mild afternoon that destroyed the course, with only 40 of the 77 starters even being able to finish due to all the damage . . . and times almost six seconds behind first-run leader Camille Rast of Switzerland, who had finished second to Scheib in the previous day's giant slalom by .14 seconds (and today held over a half-second lead on Shiffrin in fourth), still qualified for the second run.^[29] Although conditions for the second run (three and a half hours later) were better, 6 of the 30 racers nevertheless failed to finish, and 2 others were so far behind (over 8.5 seconds) that they did not earn any points; Rast, however, posted the second-best time for the second run but failed to win, by .09 seconds this time, because Shiffrin closed with a great finishing run that beat Rast by .63 seconds, thus keeping Shiffrin undefeated in slalom for the season and giving her the sixth straight win in slalom (going back to last season), 69th win in World Cup slalom, and 106th World Cup win in all disciplines.^[29] Rast's back-to-back runner-ups moved her ahead of Robinson into second place behind Shiffrin for the season, but almost 200 points behind.^[29] In the giant slalom the following week at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, Robinson again failed to complete the first run, and Scheib and Rast again battled for the win, except this time Rast came out on top by 0.2 seconds for her first giant slalom victory, thus closing her deficit to Shiffrin (who was fifth) in the overall race to 140 points; Rast, who like all members of the Swiss team wore a black armband during the race, then dedicated her victory to the victims of a New Year's Eve fire in Crans-Montana, in her home canton.^[30] The next day, Rast (still wearing the black armband) and Shiffrin dominated in the slalom, but this time Rast narrowly bettered Shiffrin in each run to win by 0.14 seconds, break Shiffrin's season-long slalom winning streak, and win back-to-back races the same weekend, while the next-best skier (Rast's teammate Wendy Holdener) finished over a second and a half (actually 1.83 seconds) behind.^[31]

The downhill season then resumed with a shortened course due to heavy snow in Zauchensee, Austria, and Vonn remained on top of the podium by a little over 1/3 of a second over Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie, allowing her to open up a 129-point lead over Aicher in the discipline.^[32] The next day's super-G had to be cancelled due to snow and strong, gusty winds that made the course unsafe;^[33] the race was then rescheduled as a second super-G to be held in Soldeu, Andorra, on 28 February, with the downhill scheduled for that day being moved back to the 27th.^[34] Two days later, at a night slalom in Flachau, Austria, the top two after both runs were American, with Shiffrin winning and Paula Moltzan second – maintaining a statistic that no American woman other than Shiffrin has won a World Cup slalom since Lindsey Vonn in 2009, and leaving Shiffrin with a 170-point lead overall over Rast (who finished fourth).^[35] That weekend, on the long downhill course at Tarvisio, Italy, last raced in the World Cup in 2011, Italy's Nicol Delago posted a home-team victory for her first World Cup win, edging out both Weidle-Winkelmann and Vonn, who posted her fifth-straight podium for the season and moved into third place in the overall rankings – thus placing three Americans (Shiffrin, Vonn, and Moltzan) in the overall top four.^[36] The next day, the third super-G of the season finally took place, with Germany's Aicher holding off Vonn for the victory and Czechia's Ester Ledecká returning to the podium for the first time in over a year (11 Jan. 2025), while the rest of the field finished over a second behind Aicher, which moved her into third place overall, 8 points ahead of Vonn.^[37] Also during that weekend, Slovakia's Petra Vlhová, who won the overall title in 2021, announced that, after two years of recovery, she had finally been cleared to return to competitive skiing, and she hoped to compete enough to be ready to defend her 2022 slalom title in the Olympics a month later.^[38]

Two days later, at the giant slalom at Kronplatz, Italy, came another return: defending overall champion Brignone, who said that she had only been training on skis for 13 days after her surgery and recovery but wanted the race to see where she stood physically less than one month before the Olympic Games: "Then we arrived to this conclusion when we said, “OK, it's maybe good for me to try’".^[39] But she did more than "try" at Kronplatz, as her sixth-place finish, the top by an Italian on the home snow, ensured her selection for the Italian Olympic team.^[40] In the race, Scheib closed from third after the first run to overtake both Rast and Sweden's Sara Hector, the first-run leader, for her fourth victory of the season.^[40] Just a few days later in another giant slalom at Špindlerův Mlýn, Czechia, however, Scheib skied out and failed to finish her second run, and Hector maintained her opening-run lead to earn her first win of the season, narrowly edging the two fastest racers on the second run: Americans Moltzan and Shiffrin (who earned her first podium in giant slalom in two years; the last was the week before the first of her two serious injuries over those seasons).^[41] Unlike Brignone, Vhlová chose not to return the next day for the last slalom before the Olympics, and Shiffrin repeated her early-season dominance, posting the fastest time on both runs, beating runner-up Rast by 1.67 seconds and the rest of the field by over two seconds, and (with a 288-point lead with only two races remaining) clinching the season crystal globe in the discipline (her record ninth in slalom, for the moment one better than Vonn's eight in downhill).^[42] The next weekend in a downhill at Crans Montana, Switzerland, just nine days before the Olympic downhill, a day with snowfall and poor visibility led to three of the first six racers crashing out, including two – Marte Monsen of Norway and Vonn – who ended up in the netting surrounding the course and needed significant assistance, before the race was canceled.^[43] Vonn was airlifted off the course^[44] and found to have completely torn her ACL, an injury requiring surgery that would normally be season-ending – but Vonn decided to compete in the Olympics the next weekend anyway by wearing a knee brace on her non-titanium knee.^[45] In the next day's super-G (without Vonn), the home country's Malorie Blanc, 22, won her first World Cup race by edging Goggia, with the U.S.'s Breezy Johnson recording her first super-G podium as well.^[46]

The late season (post-Olympics to finals)

In the first post-Olympic race for the World Cup women – a downhill on the Àliga course in Soldeu, Andorra – Switzerland's Corinne Suter, the 2020 discipline champion who had suffered a series of injuries in recent years and had only returned from a season-opening injury in January, edged Austria's Nina Ortlieb for her first World Cup victory in any discipline in over three years (since December 2022) and her first downhill win since the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022.^[57] Brignone was unable to maintain her Olympic form in the first of the two super-Gs there, as she only finished 15th, but Aicher dominated the field again, winning by 0.88 seconds over Robinson, with Goggia, in pursuit of her first super-G discipline championship, only managing sixth to lead Robinson by just 20 and Aicher by 96; Aicher also closed to within 300 points of overall leader Shiffrin with four more speed races before the next technical race.^[58] But the next day, Goggia earned her second super-G victory of the season, beating Aicher by 0.24 seconds to expand her lead over Robinson (who finished seventh) to 84 points and over Aicher to 116 points.^[59]

Prior to the next events in Val di Fassa (Italy), Brignone announced that she was ending her season early to permit her to fully recover from her injuries, now that she had achieved her goal of competing in the Olympics (along with winning two gold medals, in super-G and giant slalom).^[60] In the first of the two downhills there, Italy's Laura Pirovano, in her ninth World Cup season and skiing on home snow, recorded both her first podium and her first win, edging Aicher by one-one-hundredth of a second (.01), with Johnson in third; however, Aicher's total of 310 points in her last four races pushed her ahead of Rast into overall second place, just 139 points behind Shiffrin for the overall lead (1133 to 994), with two more speed races to come at Val di Fassa.^[61] Shockingly, the next day Pirovano did it again, this time beating Conny Hütter by .01 seconds and Corinne Suter by .05 seconds, which enabled Pirovano to jump over both Vonn and Aicher (who finished 12th, worth 22 points) and grab the downhill discipline lead by 28 points, while Shiffrin remained 117 points ahead of Aicher in the overall race.^[62] Aicher's recent success inspired Shiffrin to enter only her second super-G of the year the next day, but when Aicher crashed out on a bump, the story instead turned out to be two other Italian races: 35-year-old Elena Curtoni, who won the super-G and became the second-oldest women's World Cup winner ever, behind only Vonn, and Asja Zenere, a 29-year-old who just debuted on the World Cup circuit four years ago and achieved her first podium with a third-place finish, while Shiffrin's 23rd-place finish increased her lead over Aicher to 125 points.^[63]

In the last weekend before finals at Åre (Sweden), Scheib's victory in the giant slalom-- her fifth of the World Cup season (and of her nine-year career), by .36 seconds over Moltzan -- clinched the discipline title for the season for her; meanwhile, in the Shiffrin-Aicher battle for the overall lead, Shiffrin overcame a major first-run error (which left her in 12th place) to rally to fifth after two runs, just one place and five points behind Aicher (fourth), reducing Shiffrin's overall lead slightly to 120 points.^[64] Finally, in the slalom, Vhlova did not return after the Olympics, and Shiffrin tied the all-time record, previously held by Janica Kostelic (2001) and herself (2019), with her eighth slalom victory of the season, by almost a full second over Aicher (the best slalom result of Aicher's young career); Aicher thus remained in second place in the overall standings, 140 points behind Shiffrin, with just the finals remaining.^[65]