Skiing superstars launch season in style with captivating FIS Race Talk
Oct 24, 2025·Alpine Skiing
The very biggest names in Alpine skiing gathered in Sölden, Austria to reveal all live on FIS TV ahead of the Audi FIS World Cup season starting on Saturday.
Available to re-watch here, FIS Race Talk celebrated the very best of the sport, with 2025 Globe winners, Marco Odermatt (SUI/Stöckli), Henrik Kristoffersen (NOR/Van Deer), Federica Brignone (ITA/Rossignol), Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI/Head) and Zrinka Ljutic (CRO/Atomic) sitting down with co-hosts Nick Fellowes, the Director of FIS TV and Johan Eliasch, President of the FIS.
As if that was not enough, special guest Mikaela Shiffrin (USA/Atomic) joined the parade on stage, while Ljutic’s fellow Longines Rising Ski Star, Eduard Hallberg (FIN/Fischer) appeared by video link, and two highly prestigious annual awards were made.
Here are the highlights:
Brignone: ‘It’s a good battle’
There was one question burning every fan’s lips when Federica Brignone (ITA/Rossignol) arrived in the TV studio to much acclaim: how is rehab progressing following the serious injury she suffered in March?
“My rehab is going really good for the injury that I had. It's really, really nice,” Brignone said. “For sure, it has been tough and painful and boring and nothing that I wanted to do this summer. But I'm good and everything is going better.
Great news for the sport and great news for her legion of fans, who then got an insight into just what it takes to comeback from such an injury with Brignone explaining that she is “in the rehab centre five-seven hours a day” working in the gym and in the pool and getting treatment.
Thanks to so such dedication she is “starting to see” a time when she can get back on skis. All of which naturally throws up the prospect of a dream return in time for a home Olympic Games.
“I’m trying, I’m working hard for that,” said an emotional Brignone who was also awarded the prestigious Skieur D’Or trophy for her achievements last season by the Association of International Ski Journalist (AIJS).
“I don’t need to go to the Olympics, I don’t need anything else in my career, I just want to do it again.”
Gut-Behrami: ‘We’re not working to be 10th’
Longtime rival Gut-Behrami will certainly want to be there in Cortina D’Ampezzo, at what will be her final Olympic Games. And in a brilliantly passionate interview, the three-time Olympic medallist made it very clear she will be there to win, nothing else.
“What I missed from the past, from the beginning of my career, was that everyone was more honest than now. Now we have social media, so it's even more important that everyone likes you, that you look like you have a nice face, you are always fair to everyone… (but) I remember Anja Pärson (SWE), Tina Maze (SLO) they showed their real emotions,” Gut-Behrami said in answer to a fan question.
“It was OK to be angry because we're working to win races, we're not working to be 10th.
“I get angry even more when I see young skiers coming, they don't qualify (for the second run), and it feels like it's OK. It's not, it's not OK. It’s not that I'm going to put pressure on you and say you were bad, but it's not the case that for you it doesn't matter if you qualify, if you get 10th. It's like you have to be happy with everything you're achieving.
“It’s the World Cup and we are working every day so hard to win races. I don’t want to go up tomorrow and be 25th. It can happen, I accept that but I am not going to say it’s amazing.”
With that popular attitude in her back pocket, plus the fact her final Olympic Games will happen in a place she calls “almost home” the Swiss star is surely a top tip to bow out in style later this season.
Odermatt reveals ‘biggest challenge so far’
If Gut-Behrami is an early favourite for Olympic glory, Marco Odermatt is perhaps as close as you get to a sure thing in a wild, unpredictable sport like Alpine ski racing. The man who will be defending four Globes for the second successive season was candid enough to admit that it is his ability to perform at the “biggest” events that gives him the most pleasure.
Not that the Olympic GS and three-time world champion was suggesting he finds it easy to perform when the pressure is at its highest. In fact, Odermatt gave fans a rare indication that he is after all human, when asked whether it is easier or tougher to ski in front of his adoring home crowd.
“After that first victory you are just happy you could win in front of your home crowd and from then on it got not easier, but more enjoyable.”
Racing against his flying, young teammates is also enjoyable… most of the time.
“Let’s say they are very fast, they’ve sometimes been too fast for me to catch up with them,” Odermatt said of 21-year-old reigning Downhill world champion Franjo Von Allmen (SUI/Head) and 25-year-old Alexis Monney (SUI/Stöckli).
“But no, I really enjoy to ski with them. It's great to see that the next athletes already come up in our team. I'm really good friends with them, and I'm happy what I've achieved, but I also like to see good guys or friends winning too.”
Kristoffersen shares blueprint for Big Globe success
For Henrik Kristoffersen, the question as to whether he could climb one place higher and beat Odermatt to the Overall Crystal Globe this season prompts multiple possible answers, but maybe only one probable one.
“I think it’s possible for this year with the Slalom and GS (only) to do it (but) if he does like he did two seasons ago and scores more than 2000 points, then it's gonna be difficult,” Kristoffersen laughed.
“Of course you have to beat him a lot in GS. I think if you win eight-10 races and be on the podium 18,19 times… I think it’s possible but it’s very difficult.”
One career aim that Kristoffersen intends to fulfil is nabbing an Olympic gold and he has a plan as to just how to do it.
Ljutic & Hallberg stars of today
She may have been named the 2025 Longines Rising Ski Stars, alongside 22-year-old Eduard Hallberg, but there is no doubt Zrinka Ljutic has well and truly already arrived. Crowned Slalom World Cup champion in March, the Croatian had a busy day, and after all the attention her performances have garnered, the 21-year-old revealed she just cannot wait to race again.
“I’ve had enough of training,” Ljutic laughed, before turning her attention to Sölden’s famous piste that awaits her on Saturday.
“I would say I prefer medium steep terrain, like not too sleep. This (Sölden’s ‘wall’) is not something I train often in GS.”
As such, a first podium place in Sölden would be a mighty impressive way to start the season for a skier who admitted that one day she intends to make an assault on the Overall World Cup title.
“For this season, I'm not adding a third discipline, at least not before Olympic Games in Cortina, and I know that's needed for the Big Globe, but I'm still working towards that,” Ljutic said. “It's on the radar.”
Her fellow young Slalom star Hallberg was unable to join Ljutic on stage, but sent a message from Levi, as he attempts to build on a season that included an eighth place in Gurgl and a 24th at home in Levi, a race in which he lay eighth after run one.
“Everything is possible,” the 22-year-old said simply.
GS ‘all-consuming’ for Shiffrin
That is a message Mikaela Shiffrin has long lived by. And FIS Race Talk’s special guest was typically honest in revealing that Saturday’s GS season-opener is a huge moment for her, following the post-traumatic stress syndrome she suffered after injuring herself in Killington’s GS last November.
“It's the next step in my preparation for this entire season, including the Olympics, getting back in the start-gate and trying to bring some really good race mentality to giant slalom skiing,” Shiffrin said.
“This is the all-consuming talk for me right now. I've done so much good preparation work together with my team, and I'm really proud of that, and I would say that I need quite a bit more in order to bring true confidence being through to the races. So, I have no idea what to expect for tomorrow, let alone the Olympics.
“I’m excited to find out.”
What motivates a skier who has won just about everything in the sport is a fascinating question, so fascinating that Shiffrin is soon to launch a podcast on that very subject.
“There's a drive that we all have that I don't entirely understand where it comes from,” she said. “So for me personally, when I have this perfect training day on the mountain that I feel like I'm doing lap after lap and I can improve and I'm working well with my team, my coaches. And we're working on the equipment, and there's good feedback, and I'm getting a little better each run. I look at the video and the timing, all these pieces are coming together. It's like a puzzle, and I enjoy that so much.
“And the rest of my life is not that moment, because it's more rare to have a perfect training day than it is not to have one.”
