As the 2024–2025 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup season comes to an end, Team USA is racing to take a Crystal Globe.
The World Cup finals are being held from March 22-27 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Almost 150 days after the season started in Austria, qualified athletes will fight one last time. The World Cup circuit has traveled through multiple countries and continents and is now returning to Sun Valley for the first time since 1977.
The Finals will include four disciplines — downhill, super giant slalom (super-G), giant slalom and slalom— for both the men and women. The races will determine this season’s champions in each discipline and the overall title winners, and the racer with the most points after all events will be crowned the overall winner. All winners will receive the famed Crystal Globes; however, a smaller version is awarded to the individual discipline winners compared to the overall title recipient.
For Team USA, Lindsey Vonn competed both downhill and super-G. She came out of retirement for this season and has four World Cup overall titles to her name already, despite battling several knee injuries and nine surgeries during her professional career. Fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin is qualified to race slalom, although she is no longer a contender for the overall or individual title after tearing her oblique muscles in November and missing two months of competition. However, Shiffrin did claim victory in three World Cups this season.
Both women are considered some of the best competitors the sport has ever seen. Shiffrin was mentioned in Time’s 100 most influential people of 2023, and HBO made a documentary about the impact Vonn has had on the sport.
Fighting for the women’s overall title were points-leader Federica Brignone of Italy and Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland. Despite a tough fight, after inclement weather conditions canceled Saturday’s downhill race, Brignone claimed the overall title, becoming the oldest competitor ever to clinch the overall title.
The battles for the individual disciplines also come down to the wire for the women. For downhill, the pole-sitter and runner-up are divided by only 16 points. In super-G, the race is tight at 35 points. Vonn finished second in the Super G race behind Gut-Behrami, proving her skill and ability to bounce back stronger from injury.
The championship winner for the men’s overall title has already been determined. Swiss racer Marco Odermatt has won the past four years in a row and now adds other discipline wins to his arsenal, as well.
This year's World Cup final comes right before athletes will need to start preparing for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, meaning that the results of this competition will let us know who to look out for come February 2026. When this event culminates, all focus will turn toward preparation to ski on the world's biggest stage — the World Cup circuit occurs yearly while the Olympics is only every four years.
