Alpine skiing picks up speed this week

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With the Winter Olympics in northern Italy just two months away, the Alpine World Cup skiing event is heating up this week with the season's first downhill race and a high-speed super-G taking place at Beaver Creek in Colorado. Meanwhile, the only Canadian stop on the circuit will be at Circuit Mont-Tremblant in Quebec for a pair of women's giant slalom events.

Since Canada's best hopes for an Olympic medal in alpine skiing rest with the men, let's start there.

Crawford and Alexander watch the Olympic podium

Downhill and super-G are known as “speed” disciplines. They are the fastest, the most dangerous and, for the average fan, the most exciting. Although the World Cup season began six weeks ago, all but one of the races so far have been either slalom or giant slalom – “technical” disciplines. The only exception was last Thursday's men's super-G at Copper Mountain in Colorado.

After that soft start, the speed season really kicks off this week at Beaver Creek with the men's downhill on Friday and the super-G on Saturday before concluding with the giant slalom on Sunday.

The Canadians who will be watching the speed races are Jack Crawford and Cam Alexander, who are expected to compete for medals at this February's Olympic Games in the Italian alpine village of Bormio, where all the men's alpine races will be held.

Crawford, 28, was the big surprise at the 2022 Beijing Games. Despite never winning a medal at the Olympics, World Championships or even the World Cup tour, he won bronze in the (now defunct) individual all-around, finished sixth in the super-G and was fourth in the downhill, where he was just 0.07 seconds short of the podium.

Following his big breakthrough, Crawford won super-G gold at the 2023 World Championships and now owns six World Cup medals – four in the downhill and a pair in the slightly more technical super-G. The most striking of these was his victory in January last year on the famous downhill in Kitzbühel – the most prestigious and dangerous race on the World Cup circuit.

Alexander, also 28, won bronze in the downhill at the 2023 World Championships and has won five world championship medals, all in the downhill. His only win came back in March 2022 in Norway, but last January he shared the Kitzbühel podium with Crawford and won a pair of bronze medals on the Olympic hill in Bormio.

Unfortunately, Alexander's Olympic medal hopes were dashed when he suffered a season-ending knee injury during a training run at the World Championships last February. He was able to return for the first super-G match last week at Copper Mountain but finished 52nd.

Crawford also had disappointing results, finishing 27th in the defense of his super-G title and 23rd in the downhill. Last week he was 16th place on Copper Mountain.

The winner was Swiss superstar Marco Odermatt, who remains the man to win both the World Cup and the Olympics this season. The versatile 28-year-old has won four consecutive overall World Cup titles and is also the reigning champion in the downhill, super-G and giant slalom. He won Olympic gold in giant slalom in 2022 and won the world title in each of his top three disciplines.

Here's more about Canadian men who wants to challenge Odermatt.

Grenier battles Shiffrin on home snow

The bad news: It's been almost two years since a Canadian topped the Alpine Ski World Cup podium. Good news: it happened in Cortina d'Ampezzo, where all the Olympic women's races take place. Val Grenier won downhill bronze there in January 2024, completing a remarkable comeback from serious injury before Cortina dealt her another devastating blow.

Grenier won the world junior downhill title in 2016, but a horrific crash at the 2019 world championships in Sweden forced her to abandon competition in favor of less dangerous alternatives. After winning two golds and a bronze in the World Cup giant slalom, she decided to give the downhill another chance in 2024 and immediately won bronze in Cortina, but suffered another season-ending crash there two days later.

This time Grenier didn't quit. But she wasn't a strong contender last season, failing to finish in the top 20 in four starts. She did slightly better in the super-G, finishing eighth. But her bread and butter remains giant slalom: in eight starts last season, she had two top-five finishes and four top-10 finishes.

Grenier finished 12th in the World Cup giant slalom standings last season – the highest finish by a Canadian in any women's discipline – and is ranked 13th this season. She will likely be Canada's best hope for a medal at the Olympics and this weekend in Mont-Tremblant, where the giant slalom races take place on Saturday and Sunday.

Another Canadian to watch is 22-year-old Britt Richardson, who won the world junior giant slalom title in 2024 and finished 18th at the senior world championships last season. She finished 16th at Copper Mountain last week, three spots behind Grenier.

All eyes will be on American superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, who is still trying to find her stride in giant slalom, more than a year after a crash during a World Cup race left her with a serious puncture wound in her side and kept her out of action for a couple of months. She returned in time for the World Championships, but decided not to defend her giant slalom title because the race was still too difficult for her mentally and emotionally. She finished fifth in slalom, her signature event.

Looking completely healed now, Shiffrin won all three slalom races This season she has increased her World Cup win record to 104. But she has yet to finish on the giant slalom podium, finishing fourth and 14th in two starts. These will likely be her only two individual events at the Olympics as she has withdrawn from the downhill and her return to super-G is in doubt after missing it last season. The single all-around event she won at the 2021 World Championships has been replaced by the team event.

Shiffrin won Olympic gold in slalom in 2014 and giant slalom four years later before the disastrous 2022 Games in Beijing. After winning five individual medals, she came away empty-handed, finishing no better than ninth in those races and DNFing three of them, including the slalom and giant slalom.

Shiffrin's path to redemption looks more clear this winter in Italy after serious injuries to her two main rivals. The current world champion in the overall competition is Federica Brignone from Italy. just got back to training on the snow last week after breaking several bones in his left leg eight months ago. Two-time overall champion Lara Gut-Behrami, who finished second to Brignone last year, released for the season after suffering a serious knee injury last month.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Vonn's return could take the attention (and pressure) away from Shiffrin. The 41-year-old Vonn, the unrivaled alpine skiing queen until Shiffrin took her crown, is trying to qualify for the Olympic downhill and super-G events after returning to the World Cup tour last season after an absence of nearly six years.

Vonn plans to make her season debut next week in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the first women's speed race of the season. Here's more about her.