Lara Gut-Behrami wins Alpine skiing World Cup overall title, breaks age record
Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami is the oldest woman to win an Alpine skiing World Cup overall title, going a record eight years between taking the biggest annual prize in ski racing.
Gut-Behrami, 32, mathematically clinched her second overall title Sunday with two races left in the 39-race season.
The overall standings take into account results from every race across downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom, crowning the world's best all-around Alpine skier.
Gut-Behrami trailed five-time overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin by 420 points when Shiffrin crashed in a Jan. 26 downhill.
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Shiffrin missed the next 11 races with leg injuries.
Gut-Behrami won five of those races to take a commanding 282-point lead over Italian Federica Brignone going into the four-race World Cup Finals.
Both women skipped Saturday's opening slalom, a discipline neither races regularly.
That meant that Brignone needed to win the three remaining races — Sunday's giant slalom and next week's super-G and downhill — and have Gut-Behrami finish outside the top 13 in every race.
Gut-Behrami clinched the overall by placing in the top 13 in Sunday's giant slalom in Saalbach, Austria.
Gut-Behrami, a two-time 2009 World Championships silver medalist at age 17, won her first overall title in 2015-16.
The following year, she suffered a season-ending ACL tear with meniscus damage in her left knee in a warm-up at the world championships while in second place in the overall standings behind Shiffrin, who went on to win her first overall that season.
Gut-Behrami won her first world championships titles in 2021 and first Olympic gold medal in 2022.
Fellow Swiss Vreni Schneider was previously the oldest woman to win an overall, at age 30 in 1995.
Austrian Stephan Eberharter was the only older Alpine skier than Gut-Behrami to win an overall, at ages 32 and 33 in 2002 and 2003.
Alpine skiing TV, live stream schedule for 2023-24 World Cup season
How to watch Mikaela Shiffrin on the 2023-24 Alpine skiing World Cup on Peacock and NBC Sports.
