Italy’s Giovanni Franzoni set himself up perfectly for next month’s Winter Olympics on home snow by winning Saturday’s World Cup downhill in Kitzbuehel, considered the Holy Grail of alpine skiing.
Franzoni clocked 1min 52.31sec for just his second victory on the circuit, pushing Swiss master Marco Odermatt, who retained his super-G title on Friday, into second by 0.07sec. France’s Maxence Muzaton belied his lowly bib number of 29 to round out the podium (+0.39).
“It’s crazy!” Franzoni said. “I never considered myself as a downhill skier. “Taking a first podium in Wengen and a first victory in Kitzbuehel is unbelievable. Every downhill skier wants to win here, it’s everyone’s dream.”
Franzoni dedicated his win to former teammate Matteo Franzoso, who died in a training crash in Chile in September.
“At the start I had a little emotional moment because of Matteo,” Franzoni said. “This is the race to dedicate to him because of the legend of Kitzbuehel. It’s the max I can do for him. “I know he’s watching from heaven. I wish I could be here with him, but it is what it is.”
While the top 25 in the super-G finished within one second of Odermatt on Friday, there was a much wider gap between the top skiers in the most prestigious race on the circuit, often dubbed the Super Bowl of skiing, or the “Hollywood of snow” in Marcel Hirscher’s words.
Franzoni was the second starter down the 3.3km-long Streif course on the Hahnenkamm mountain regarded as the toughest on the circuit. The 24-year-old clocked 144km/h (89mph) as he safely negotiated 80m-long jumps and mastered sapping centrifugal forces on an icy slope with gradients of up to 85%.
No luck for Odermatt: Odermatt came into the race having won three of the four World Cup downhills this season. But he has never won the Kitzbuehel downhill, having finished third and second in the two downhills raced in 2024 won by French racer Cyprien Sarrazin, and sixth last year.
There was nothing more the Swiss racer could do to reel in Franzoni’s time in a race held in front of tens of thousands of baying fans in overcast conditions.
Odermatt lost valuable time on the final third of the piste and when he came through the line in second place, Franzoni was left shaking his head in disbelief, in the knowledge that his closest rival had failed. Odermatt’s teammate and reigning world champion Franjo von Allmen also threatened, but made a costly mistake going into the final jump.
Franzoni bagged prize money of 101,000 euros ($118,000), part of a one-million-euro pot on offer for three days of racing. Defending champion James Crawford of Canada could only finish 20th, at 1.65sec. Among onlookers on Saturday were former Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp, Swedish football great Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian bodybuilder/actor-cum-California governor. “It feels magic… the adrenaline!” said Ibrahimovic, an avowed non-skier who joked: “I didn’t qualify for the downhill, I’m aiming for next year!” Schwarzenegger called the Hahnenkamm “the best run with the best athletes”, proceeding to list all his Austrian food favourites on which he feasts in Kitzbuehel. “I’ll be back!” he boomed, raucous applause greeting his catchphrase from the 1984 “The Terminator” film. Of the 57 racers, from 17 nations, who took to the start hut, just four failed to finish the demanding course. But there were no crashes on a course that has a track record for some gruesome wipeouts and evacuation by helicopter.