It was a good weekend to be a skier from Switzerland, as two of the country’s top alpine racers dominated the podium at the Stifel Aspen Winternational.
One of them, Marco Odermatt, is on a winning streak: He’s now earned 12 World Cup Giant Slalom gold medals in a row, including two at Aspen Mountain this weekend, and is so far ahead in the World Cup rankings that he’s already secured the overall title.
Everything should be gravy after that, but Odermatt said he hasn’t lost the motivation to ski hard.
“When you're at the start, you want to win every race, perform in every race,” he told reporters on Friday. “This is motivation enough.”
But, still, skiing at such a high caliber for so long can take a toll on the body. Friday’s giant slalom was one of the hardest races he’s skied all season, in part because he was feeling the effects of heat and altitude. After his second win of the weekend on Saturday, Odermatt reflected on the effort required to stay on top.
“It's really hard these days,” Odermatt said. “I keep pushing. It takes a lot of energy every day to ski on that level. And (it’s) cool that it worked again.”
Odermatt maintains that he doesn’t want to back off now. He said he’d much rather continue his current streak than lose one race and have to start over again.
“Usually the pressure goes away, with winning,” Odermatt said. “But now, if you have a streak like this, it keeps going.”
Odermatt’s teammate, Loïc Meillard, also had a strong weekend.
Meillard was second, behind Odermatt, in both the GS races. Odermatt didn’t compete in Sunday’s slalom, but Meillard did — and earned his own spot on the top of the podium.
“It takes energy, it takes focus” to race so well for three days in a row, Meillard told reporters after his win on Sunday. He was tired by day three of racing, and had to battle tough conditions on the course to clinch the gold medal, but in his view, the juice was well worth the squeeze.
“You have to go deep in your body to take it, and when you have a good race, everything is OK,” Meillard said.
