Team Canada gathers major momentum heading towards alpine ski world championships
Team Canada’s alpine ski team is heating up right in time for the 2025 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. The big dance will take place February 4-16 in Saalbach, Austria and is expected to draw over 600 athletes from 70 nations, as well as more than 150,000 fans.
Team Canada’s top skiers are rounding into top form for the biennial event, with recent podium performances by two-time Olympian James (Jack) Crawford and Cameron Alexander in the iconic Kitzbühel World Cup downhill fuelling the anticipation for the world championship.
Crawford took the downhill win at Kitzbühel, the first Canadian to do so since Todd Brooker in 1983. Alexander joined him on the podium as the third-placer finisher, another moment of historical symmetry, as Canadian Ken Read also took third in 1983. Crawford’s victory and the Canadian double podium had many reminiscing about the early 1980s era of the “Crazy Canucks” team who had dominated the downhill on the Hahnenkamm.
READ: Crawford earns first career World Cup gold at prestigious Kitzbuehel race
While the victory at Kitzbühel marks Crawford’s first career World Cup win, the 27-year-old heads into the world championships as the reigning world champion in the men’s super-G, a title he won in Courchevel-Méribel, France in 2023. He had already proven his prowess at competing in big events when he won Olympic bronze in the alpine combined at Beijing 2022.
“I think the Olympic Games and world championships are special because you only get so many in your career to compete in,” Crawford said in a conference call just days before the worlds get underway. “For me, whenever I step into a start gate of one of those games it’s very easy to just go out and ski free because I know that if I don’t and I don’t bring my best then that reality [of winning medals] won’t ever come true.
“Standing on the super-G podium [in 2023] was incredible and that was a huge success for my career, being able to claim a world champs medal,” Crawford continued. “For sure there’s other things I’d like to accomplish at the world championships, like a downhill. I think it would also be very cool to be able to contend again, to defend my super-G title. I don’t know how many times in a career you get that opportunity.”
Alexander also stood on the podium at the last worlds, winning bronze in the men’s downhill—his very first world championship race. He followed up with two World Cup downhill podiums in the 2023-24 season and two more this season. In addition to his third-place finish in Kitzbühel, he also placed third in the Bormio downhill for the second straight year, showing his comfort on the mountain that will host the men’s Olympic alpine events a year from now.
READ: Cameron Alexander Lands on the Podium in Bormio
Alexander has been consistently strong all season, recording top-10 finishes in seven of his 10 World Cup starts.
“I feel like my skiing’s in a good spot and I think I have a very clear approach of what I need to do each race and it’s just making sure I’m sticking with that. I know if I put it together perfectly, it can lead to a very very good result. And so far, it’s led to a lot of very solid ones,” he said during the pre-worlds conference call.
Asked what impact their success in Kitzbühel might have on their confidence in future races, both Crawford and Alexander noted that in the alpine speed events, it’s important to not get over confident or stop working as hard as ever.
“You have to have the desire to push and go fast. It’s not as simple as just bringing confidence from that race,” said Crawford. “Skiing is one of those sports where you can’t really let off at any point. Once you kind of aren’t feeling hungry or aren’t pushing at your absolute limit, you’re just way up the back. So I think for me, going into the world championships it’s just about staying hungry and really trying to find every little thing that I can do to be faster.”
“Complacency will kill you,” added Alexander. “You always take confidence from big results but…you can’t expect just because I did well in one spot I’m going to be good at the other.”
As for the Saalbach course, it is one on which the Canadian men have a fair amount of experience, despite the World Cup downhill race being cancelled there last March and no World Cup races on the mountain in 2022 or 2023. Head coach John Kucera says it is one that the team is comfortable on and they have a good understanding of.
Anticipation is also high for the Canadian women to hit the slopes in Saalbach. Two-time Olympian Valérie Grenier has made a strong return to competition after a nasty crash in Cortina D’Ampezzo last January. The 28-year-old has posted three top-10 finishes in giant slalom since returning to the World Cup circuit in late November, including a fourth-place finish in Semmering, Austria. She also conquered the course on which her season ended early last year, racing the downhill and super-G at what served as the Olympic test event in Cortina.
Two-time Olympian Laurence St-Germain is another reigning world champion after her stunning victory in the women’s slalom in 2023. She is still chasing her first career World Cup podium, but has placed in the top 11 in four of five slalom races this season.
Britt Richardson is also in the top-30 of the World Cup Start List for giant slalom. The 21-year-old posted a career-best seventh-place finish in the giant slalom at the World Cup in Kronplatz, Italy in January.
Also keep an eye out for two sets of brothers. Brodie Seger sits 19th in the World Cup standings for the men’s downhill, while younger brother Riley Seger is coming off a 15th-place finish in the super-G at Kitzbühel. Jeffrey Read, who has a World Cup podium on his resumé from last February, is number 20 on the World Cup Start List for the super-G, while his older brother Erik Read is Canada’s top-ranked male technical skier. And if that Read surname sounds familiar, they are indeed the sons of the aforementioned Crazy Canuck Ken Read.
You can catch all of the action from Saalbach on cbcsports.ca or CBC Gem.