The season will be interrupted for the Alpine Skiing World Championships, this time in Saalbach, Austria during 4–16 February 2025.[2] The championship in women's giant slalom is scheduled for Thursday, 13 February.
Season summary
The first giant slalom of the season, scheduled as usual on the Rettenbach glacier in Sölden, Austria in October, was won by 2024 discipline runner-up (and 2020 discipline champion) Federica Brignone, who rallied from third place after the opening run with the seventh-fastest time in the second run to overtake both of the racers ahead of her.[3] With the victory, Brignone, who is 34, became the oldest woman ever to win a World Cup race, surpassing Elizabeth Görgl of Austria, who won her last race on the World Cup circuit in December 2014 at 33, two months before turning 34.[3] Because this was the first race of the season, neither defending champion Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland nor perennial contender Petra Vlhová of Slovakia had recovered from prior-season surgeries sufficiently to be able to compete, although Gut-Behrami entered the race but did not start. Before the end of November, the third and fourth giant slaloms of the season, scheduled at Tremblant, Quebec, Canada, were cancelled due to lack of snow, pending rescheduling.[4]
Immediately thereafter, in the second giant slalom of the year at Mikaela Shiffrin's "home" course in Killington, Vermont, United States, Shiffrin was trying for her 100th World Cup victory, having won number 99 in her last race. As in Sölden, she held the lead going into the second run. However, while still in the lead shortly after the midpoint of the course, she suffered a hard crash into the fencing, which resulted in her being stretchered off the course; the crash handed the win to Sara Hector of Sweden, who thus took over the overall lead in the discipline for the season.[5] After the cancellations (which have still not been rescheduled), the next giant slalom, held after Christmas in Semmering (Austria), came down to a second-run battle between Brignone and Gut-Behrami, which was decided when Gut-Behrami hooked a gate with her arm, causing her to drop all the way to ninth and handing the victory to Brignone, who edged ahead of Hector by 4 points in the season standings.[6]
The first giant slalom of 2025 took place in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, just after New Years Day, and Hector was able to win again and reclaim the season lead after Brignone fell during her first run, with New Zealand's Alice Robinson moving into a tie with Brignone for second.[7] During the next week, one of the giant slaloms cancelled at Tremblant in December 2024 was awarded to Sestriere on 21 February, the day prior to the giant slalom already scheduled there.[8]
Finals
The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Tuesday, 25 March 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho, United States.[9] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup giant slalom discipline and the winner of the Junior World Championship in the discipline, plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, are eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 earn World Cup points.
