By Mathias Habal-Shore, Y11
The 2021 Alpine Skiing World Championships were hosted in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, with races held between the 8th and 21st of February. In the men’s races, the standout stars were Austrian Vincent Kriechmayer, who won gold in the Super-G and Downhill, and the French racer Mathieu Faivre, who came out on top in the Giant Slalom and in the Parallel. In the women’s races, Mikaela Shiffrin won the Combined, came second in the Giant Slalom, and third in both the Super-G and the Slalom, meaning that she accounted for every American medal during the races in Italy. Despite Shiffrin’s fantastic performance, a certain Lara Gut-Behrami was the queen of Italy. She won 2 gold medals, in Super-G and in Giant Slalom, and a bronze medal in Downhill.
Many ski fans were happy to see her performing at such a high level as just 4 years prior, she tore her ACL during the 2017 St. Moritz World Championships. It has been a long road to recovery for her since that injury and her first two seasons back on the world cup circuit had many believing that she wouldn’t be able to return to the same level of skiing as prior to her injury. However, this season she has finally found her feet – perhaps giving us the best skiing we’ve seen from her yet. Gut-Behrami has turned a major setback into what may be the greatest season in her career.
