Courchevel Meribel 2023 World Championships preview

It is a different story these days for Gut-Behrami, who entered Cortina 2021 having never won a major championship title but will arrive in Meribel as the defending champion in super-G and giant slalom and the Olympic super-G champion from Beijing 2022.

With wins in super-G and giant slalom so far this season, the 31-year-old Swiss racer is expected to increase her haul of eight world championship medals that she has amassed across five editions dating back to 2009.

On the men’s side, this season’s epic battles between Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt and Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde will now take place with even more at stake as both seek their first world championship medals.

Odermatt is favoured to repeat his Olympic triumph in giant slalom while Kilde has the edge in downhill, in which he has won five World Cup races this season.

The discipline in the middle, super-G, is where the rivalry between the two reaches its crescendo, making it one of the most anticipated races of these world championships.

And if either skier falters in the speed races, Austria’s Vincent Kriechmayr is waiting in the wings. The double world champion from 2021 has won three World Cup downhill races this season and appears to be the only man capable of upsetting the big two.

While it seems inevitable that these favourites will find their way on to the podium, questions surround many other medal hopefuls as the season reaches its peak in the French Alps.