The FSI World Cup returns to Canadian soil at Mont-Tremblant

This weekend will see one of the biggest days in Canadian skiing for a number of years as the Women’s Giant Slalom event rolls into Tremblant. There is a strong history here, the first ever FIS women’s World Cup event held in Canada was at Tremblant back in 1983 so there is a nice symmetry in coming back in 40 years down the line.

There will be two races over the weekend, one each on Saturday and Sunday. 80 competitors will ski in the first run each day with the top 30 then going again in the afternoon as they look to pick up key points in the FIS rankings. The current crop of skiers are top notch and importantly for the local crowds in attendance, one of the main contenders hails from the area which will give them someone to really get behind.

It is set to be a huge weekend for Quebec with more than 15,000 fans expected to head to the resort. For those who are looking for an interest then check out the betting sites for prices on the FIS Women’s Giant Slalom and then sit back to watch some of the best in the world fly down Tremblant. Let’s take a look at some of the main contenders this weekend.

A member of the Mont-Tremblant club, this is the weekend that Grenier will have had ringed in the calendar as soon as the event was announced. She sits seventh in the FIS rankings this season in the Giant Slalom, a position that she will be looking to improve on in her home race. 

She has taken a step further up the rankings in this event every year from 2018, winning her first World Cup event in January in Kranjska Gora. That put Grenier in rarified air in Canadian Giant Slalom racing, an event that had had a quiet spell since the 1970s. 

That was followed up by a bronze medal for Canada in the World Championships in the French Alps so 2023 has already been an excellent year. The medal came in the team event so she still has a bit more to do as an individual but her confidence should be high.

While there are other skiers who are enjoying a stronger season than Grenier is, there are none who have the same experience of these slopes and that home hill advantage has to count for something this weekend.

The Swiss star heads the points scoring in the Giant Slalom so far this season. Four times in her career she has won the Super Giant Slalom World Cup as well as picking up gold medals in both The Olympics and the World Championships. The former was in 2022 in Beijing where she also won a bronze medal in this event. 

She has 38 World Cup wins to her credit, again doing better in the Super Giant Slalom but six of those successes have come in the Giant. There are also 12 wins in the downhill to her credit making her one of the top all rounders in the sport at this present time. 

There is winning form in Canada in her career as well, claiming the Super Giant Slalom event at Lake Louise in December 2013, December 2014 and December 2016. That pedigree on the slopes of Canada should stand her in good stead this weekend and she will be looking to add to her points lead in this event.

Second in the Giant Slalom rankings so far this season, the Milan native made her debut on the tour at the age of 17 and has picked up three Olympic medals and three World Championship medals in a strong career, without ever quite being the very best on the planet. That said, she is second in the list of all time Italian FIS World Cup event winners which is deserving of plenty of credit.

She was born into the sport, her mum Maria Rosa Quario won four World Cup events in Slalom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Having made her debut so young, she is one of the most experienced in the field at the age of 33. 

In the shortened 2020 season, Brignone won the overall World Cup title as well as the Giant Slalom. She won the Super Giant Slalom title in 2022 and has been in the top two in that particular event every year for the last four seasons. For the last eight seasons, she has made it into the top five in the final standings in the Giant Slalom. 

That consistency has been a figure of her career as a whole so she has to be a strong contender this weekend, although as is so often the case, there might be a couple of others who are just that little bit quicker than she is.

The first Slovak skier to win an Olympic gold medal in the slalom and also the first to land a World Cup overall title. The latter she did in 2021 and the former in 2022 so she has been in the form of her life in recent years. 

Since 2019, Vlhova has been right at the very top of her game, finishing no worse than third in the overall and the slalom in the World Cup standings. She has 29 wins overall in the World Cup and hitting another round number would be a plus for her here with a chance.  

That said, it will be interesting to see how Vlhova responds to her disappointment last time out in Finland. She had absolutely smashed her first run and looked set to run out a comfortable winner when she hit a gate hard in her second run and failed to finish the course.

Without a doubt she was the moral winner of the weekend but she will need to show her mental strength to shrug that off and arrive at the peak of her powers. She is experienced enough to get straight back on the horse after a fall and if she can show the same speed at Tremblant then she is probably the one that they all have to beat.

Hector is all about consistency this season. Fifth in the Slalom and fourth in the Giant Slalom have her sat third in overall points. The 31-year-old from Sweden has been a bit of a late maturer, not really becoming a contender until 2021 but is now notching up top ten finishes like it’s going out of fashion.

Her biggest day in the sun came at the 2022 Olympics when she won the Giant Slalom gold medal. Given that she has only four wins at the World Cup, it was a bit of a shock to see her land the top spot in such a prestigious event as the Olympics.

Sweden had not won a gold in the Giant Slalom for 30 years prior to her win in Beijing so that victory was a huge deal not only for Hector but the whole of her country.  By December 2020, Hector had only produced a pair of podium performances in the World Cup events. She has had 10 since December 2021, her career really taking off. 

A strong performance this weekend in Tremblant can help her consolidate third place in the FIS World Cup standings and if things go the right way for her, she could take one of the top two spots as she looks to build on the second place finish that she had last season.

Only fifth in the current standings but the Italian was the 2021 Giant Slalom World Cup Champion so the pedigree is there for her to improve on that quickly. The 27 year old made her debut at the age of 18 in World Cup events, winning six of them since November 2019.

Bassino won a World Championship gold medal in both 2021 and 2023, the former a combined gold medal with her top podium spot coming in the Super Giant Slalom. Her World Cup wins have her in sixth on the all-time Italian FIS winners list. 

She has had some winning form in North America in the past, landing the Giant Slalom in Killington in 2019, filling the runner-up spot at that event in 2022. If she can add to that record with another strong effort, then she will be well set to improve on her current position in the rankings.

Shiffrin leads the overall FIS slalom rankings heading into the weekend but the majority of her points have come in the slalom rather than the Giant Slalom which is what she will face in both races in Tremblant.

She won her 89th World Cup race in Levi earlier in the month, though fortunate to do so. That said, when you have had as much success in a career as Shiffrin has, sometimes you make your own luck and her Finland triumph was exactly that.

Still a few days short of her 16th birthday was when she made her FIS World Cup debut, she has become the most successful skier in the modern era, setting some remarkable records along the way, including when the youngest gold medalist in the Slalom at the Olympics.

That came at the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia, at the age of 18. Shiffrin added further golds in the 2018 and 2022 games and at the age of 28, there is plenty of time for her to add to those medals in 2026 and perhaps even in 2030. Salt Lake City is one of the places who are bidding on the latter games so a home games would be a huge way to end her career. 

Shiffrin has 89 FIS World Cup wins to her credit so far and it would take a serious mishap for her not to make it to triple figures sooner rather than later. 21 of those have come in the Giant Slalom which is a distance second to the 54 that she has won in the Slalom. 

She is well on top of the overall standings in the World Cup this season. 150 of her 200 points have come in the Slalom and only 40 in the Grand Slalom. Without a doubt, she is the most talented in the field but whether she is going to be able to do it in her lesser event is going to be something that she has to show this weekend.

Whoever ends up as the FIS champion in Tremblant, it is a great day for the sport in Canada and hopefully helps to put skiing back in the forefront of some minds who might otherwise have forgotten about the speed and skill that it takes to hurtle down a mountain taking the sharp turns of the Giant Slalom right on the edges.

When it comes to trying to find the winner this week in a bid to land the jackpot, we will be taking a chance that Petra Vlhova will be able to overcome her recent lack of completion in her stride and get back to doing what she does best. There is no question that she was by far the best on that occasion so she can see off a strong field.

Hopefully the home crowd will be a boost to Valerie Grenier. There are a few in the field who are better than Grenier but we all know what a boost to athletes that a vocal crowd behind them can be. Quebec needs to get behind their local star and make sure that she is given the royal treatment in a bid to get her over the line in one of the top positions over the weekend. If she can then expect Tremblant to be rocking rather than just trembling with excitement!