Raúl Revuelta
Jun 265 min
The highlight of the 2024-2025 winter season will be the Alpine World Ski Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm. Having hosted the World Cup Finals in March 2024, the organizers have shown that the venue is ready to welcome the world's best athletes for two weeks of competitions.
The 48th Alpine World Ski Championships will be held in Saalbach from February 4th to 16th, 2025.
The Alpine World Ski Championships is an Alpine Skiing competition organized by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS). After the Olympic Winter Games, the Alpine World Ski Championships is the most important event in the world of skiing.
Initially, the FIS was only responsible for Nordic skiing. FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1925 in Janské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, were given status as the first official World Championships. Five years later at the 11th FIS Congress held in Oslo on February 24–26, 1930, it was decided to include the Alpine Skiing disciplines of Slalom and Downhill in the FIS International Regulations. Great Britain, led by British ski pioneer Arnold Lunn played a major role in the inclusion of Alpine Ski.
On February 19–23, 1931 the first FIS Alpine World Ski Championships were held in Mürren, Switzerland. During the 1930s, the Championships have held annually in Europe (1932 Cortina d'Ampezzo, 1933 Innsbruck, 1934 St. Moritz, 1935 Mürren, 1936 Innsbruck, 1937 Chamonix, 1938 Engelberg, and 1939 Zakopane) until the outbreak of World War II, preventing a 1940 event.
Following World War II, the Alpine World Ski Championships were connected with the Olympic Winter Games for several decades. From 1948 through 1982, the Championships were held in even-numbered years, with the Winter Games organized as the World Ski Championships through 1980, and a separate event held in even-numbered non-Olympic years. The 1950 championships in the United States at Aspen were the first held outside of Europe and the first official Championships organized independently of the Olympic Winter Games since 1939.
There were no Alpine World Ski Championships in 1983 or 1984 and since the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1985 held in Bormio they have been scheduled in odd-numbered years, independent of the Winter Olympics.
The program for the first FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Mürren, Switzerland, included a Downhill and Slalom event for Men and Women.
David Zogg, a Swiss Alpine and Nordic Combined skier from Arosa, Switzerland, won the first World Championship gold medal in Slalom. Another Swiss skier, Walter Prager became the first World Champion in Downhill.
Esmé Mackinnon, a British alpine skier from Edinburgh, Scotland, was the first female FIS World Champion in Downhill and Slalom. She was a member of the Ladies' Ski Club, the first skiing club for women,
founded in 1923, at the suggestion of Arnold Lunn, by Doreen Elliott, Mrs Duncan Harvey, and Lunn's wife, Mabel Lunn.
The Combined event was added to the program at the second edition of the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, in 1932. Otto Furrer, a Swiss Alpine skier and Cross-country skier from Zermatt was the first World Champion in the Combined discipline.
Rösli Streiff, a Swiss alpine skier from Glarus, Switzerland, and a founding member of the Swiss Ladies Ski Club in 1929 won the first gold medal in the Combined event at the Ski Championships. She also won a second gold at the Slalom event.
The Giant Slalom made its debut and displaced the Combined event at the 11th FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in the United States at Aspen, Colorado, in 1950.
In the first race of the championships and the first Giant Slalom event held on February 13, 1950, 21-year-old female skier Dagmar Rom from Innsbruck, Austria, won the gold medal. Two days later she won a second gold medal in Slalom.
In the first Men's Championships race, Zeno Colò from Italy won the first gold medal in Giant Salom. He also won a second gold medal in Downhill and a silver medal in Slalom.
The Combined event returned as a separate event, with a Downhill and two Slalom runs at the 27th FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Schladming, Austria, in 1982.
Erika Hess a ski racer from Wolfenschiessen, Nidwalden, Switzerland, won the gold medal in the Combined event after finishing in 12 position in the Downhill held on January 28, and winning the Slalom three days later. Hess also won two more gold medals at the Championships in Giant Slalom and Slalom.
French alpine skier Michel Vion won the gold medal in the Combined after finishing in 5th position in the Slalom and 9th position in the Downhill.
The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Crans-Montana, Switzerland 1987, included the Super-G event for the first time. Super-G was first run on the Alpine Ski World Cup level four seasons earlier, in December 1982 in Val d'Isère. The discipline was added to the official schedule of the Olympic Winter Games one year later in Calgary 1988.
Swiss skiers Pirmin Zurbriggen and Maria Walliser won gold medals to become the first world champions in the discipline.
The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Åre, Sweden in 2007 were the first Championships to use the "Super-Combined" format (one run each of Downhill and Slalom) for the Combined event.
Daniel Albrecht, a Swiss skier from Fiesch in the canton of Valais, won the gold medal in the Super Combined and four days later took the silver medal in the Giant Slalom.
Swedish alpine skier Anja Pärson won three gold medals in the 2007 World Championships in the Super-G, the Super Combined, and the Downhill.
The Nations' Team event was held for the first time in the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in Bormio, Italy, in 2005. Six athletes from each country, including at least two men and two women, compete in four Super-G and four Slalom runs. Germany was the winner of the event.
The Nations Team Event competition at the 2011 World Ski Championships was raced in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a Parallel Giant Slalom in a best-of-4 system. France was the winner after beating Austria in the Final.
The race for the Nations Team Event competition at the 2013 World Championships in Schladming was conducted as a Parallel event. The format was a knock-out round competition with the pairings being made according to the Nations Cup Ranking. In each pairing, two female and two male skiers from each team raced a Parallel Slalom in a best-of-4 system.
The best 16 nations in the overall World Cup Nations Cup standing after the last World Cup race, before the event, were qualified. The total team size per Nation is limited to a maximum of 6 competitors; at least 2 competitors from one gender.
The Parallel Giant Slalom competition for Men and Women was introduced at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 2021 in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Three new World Champions were crowned in Cortina as Marta Bassino, Katharina Liensberger, and Matthieu Faivre all earned gold medals in Cortina’s Parallel World Championship debut.