Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt won his first World Championship gold medal, mastering the men’s downhill at the 2023 Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel-Meribel.
1.09 seconds that reset the race
The L’Éclipse course stretched 3.1 kilometres under clear skies at 2°C. Early starter Florian Schieder delivered a strong target, but when Odermatt pushed from the start hut as the tenth racer, the standard shifted instantly. He crossed 1.09 seconds faster than the Italian, a margin that remained untouched through the next four skiers.
Sunlight and shadow played tricks across the slope. The notorious “Trou Noir” — a jump landing in dark shade where bumps vanished — ended defending champion Vincent Kriechmayr’s hopes. Kriechmayr later admitted it was “not good enough” while conceding Odermatt had “the perfect run.”
Kilde closes, but a gap holds firm
Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde carved a 0.20-second lead through the first sector. Over the remaining four sectors, that advantage bled away. He finished in 1:47.53, 0.48 seconds behind the Swiss leader, taking silver. Canada’s Cameron Alexander claimed bronze, a further 0.41 seconds back.
Odermatt, watching Kilde’s run from the leader’s chair, shook uncontrollably. “It was definitely something I’d never felt before, this scream at the finish,” he told reporters. “The fourth place from three days ago makes this gold even nicer.”
A drought ends on a ringing hillside
The gold broke a four-year senior World Championship medal drought after eight fruitless starts and a super-G disappointment days earlier. French veteran Johan Clarey likened his fluent, 104-kilometre-per-hour run to “the Roger Federer of skiing.” A crowd of 13,000 Swiss fans, waving flags and ringing cow bells, roared as the wait finally ended.
Five days later, Odermatt added the giant slalom world title on the same hill, becoming a double World Champion. That season he would set a men’s World Cup points record with 2,042 points, surpassing a mark that had stood for 23 years.
A complete racer had claimed the sport’s fastest discipline, and the ground beneath downhill had shifted.
