Marco Odermatt secured his fifth consecutive overall World Cup title on 13 March 2026, finishing third in a tough downhill at Courchevel. The result lifted him level with Marc Girardelli on the men’s all-time list, trailing only Marcel Hirscher’s eight crowns.
Third place, two globes sealed
The penultimate downhill of the season ran on the Eclipse course, where Odermatt had won a world title three years earlier. He started 14th, already sure of the downhill globe after teammate and Olympic champion Franjo von Allmen skied out and did not finish.
Odermatt fought through trouble on the mid-section and crossed 0.31 seconds behind winner Vincent Kriechmayr, who delivered Austria’s first downhill victory of the winter. Giovanni Franzoni took second, just nine hundredths off the pace, while Alexis Monney crashed and broke a ski, forcing a race pause.
Five straight, a rarefied rank
The 60 points for third place pushed Odermatt’s overall lead over Lucas Pinheiro Braathen to 632 points. Braathen, who does not race downhill, could no longer close the gap before the World Cup Finals in Norway.
With the outright crown settled, Odermatt joined Girardelli as one of only two men to win five overall titles. Hirscher’s eight remain the summit, while the Swiss skier’s season-ending tally of 16 career Crystal Globes put him third on the all-time disciplines list behind Hirscher and Ingemar Stenmark.
“I have never been as tired as at the finish today,” Odermatt told reporters afterwards. “It has been a long season.”
The moment in Courchevel was not a runaway victory but a hard-won podium, earned in rough conditions on a hill that has marked his career’s high points. Quietly, the result anchored the longest continuous reign the men’s circuit has seen in a generation.
