The complete alpine skier

In watching the early winter races in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek, I was thinking, “where are the 'complete skiers' of yesteryear?” By complete, I meant men and women who could win slalom, giant slaloms and downhills just like Toni Sailer, Jean-Claude Killy or Annemarie Moser-Pröll.

These days, it has become much tougher to be such a “jack of all trades” because of the intense training demands With that in mind, you end up with two groups of skiers, on one hand, the “speed skiers” who do well at Downhill, Super-G and GS, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, the “technical skiers” who can handle both slalom and GS like Marcel Hirscher. Some even specialize into one single event (GS in that case) to focus their efforts, like Massimiliano Bardone, Davide Simoncelli and Cyprien Richard...