In Olympic sports this weekend, Mikaela Shiffrin takes on perhaps the most dominant stretch of slalom in history at the final stop of the 2025 Alpine Ski World Cup, the giant slalom and slalom in Semmering, Austria, on Saturday and Sunday (live on NBCSN and Peacock).
Shiffrin has won the last five World Cup slalom events dating back to last season, all by large margins of more than one second. Before this, no woman or man in history had won more than three World Cup slalom events in a row by more than a second.
Advertising
Shiffrin has won seven of her last nine starts in slalom and GS, particularly at Semmering, although she last raced there in December 2022.
First up is the giant slalom, where Shiffrin has recently made progress in her ongoing comeback from a November 2024 GS crash that sidelined her for two months. She has finished fourth, 14th, sixth and fourth in GS races this season.
Alpine skiing: PwC Tremblant World Cup
How to watch Mikaela Shiffrin at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Semmering
Mikaela Shiffrin leads the final women's 2025 Alpine Ski World Cup races.
On the men's side, Livigno, the 2026 Olympic site for freestyle skiing and snowboarding, will host an Alpine Ski World Cup race for the first time – a super-G on Saturday.
Advertising
Swiss Marco Odermatt, who could enter the Olympics as the favorite in the downhill, super-G and giant slalom, is the reigning super-G world champion and has led the World Cup standings for four years in a row in these events.
Ryan Cochran-Siegle won super-G silver at the 2022 Olympics, the United States' only medal in alpine skiing at the Beijing Games. It's still early, but he's having his best season so far this Olympic cycle, finishing seventh in the World Cup downhill (with one runner-up finish) and 16th in the super-G (with a best finish of 10th in three races).
In cross-country skiing, the Tour de Ski, a multi-day event similar to the Tour de France consisting of World Cup races, will run from Sunday to January 4, with all six stages taking place in Italy.
Jessie Diggins is the only North American woman or man to win the Tour de Ski in the 2020-21 and 2023-24 seasons.
Diggins, an Olympic medalist of all colors who said this will be her last season before retiring, leads the overall World Cup standings through eight races.
