‘Another amazing season’ cements Odermatt’s status as all-time great

It was Marco Odermatt (SUI/Stöckli) himself who best summed up a 2025/26 Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup campaign that pushed him ever closer to the sport’s summit.

“It was another amazing season,” Odermatt said, after nine wins and five podiums across three disciplines. “In the end I collected by far the most points, I won by far the most races, I won three Olympic medals, three Globes, so I am super happy.”

Delight has become the norm for a Swiss skier who has now claimed 16 of the 20 World Cup titles on offer to him during the past four seasons. A level of domination which makes it no surprise that Lucas Pinheiro Braathen (BRA/Atomic) called him the “greatest skier in the world” even after denying him a fifth successive Giant Slalom Globe on the penultimate day of the season.

Join us as we take a dive into yet more extraordinary exploits from this record-setting 28-year-old.

All-round excellence

As if on a mission to snuff out any hope for the rest of the best, Odermatt started the season on overdrive.

A win in each of the first GS, Super G and Downhill races stamped his authority across the board. The fact he followed it up with two more wins (one in Downhill and one in GS) plus three podiums (one in each discipline) before Christmas meant the 28-year-old ate his turkey as the undisputed No.1. Again.

Not much changed in January. Odermatt shining in the Classics once more.

Seemingly untouchable in hard, icy conditions down a selection of skiing’s most prestigious tracks, the man from Buochs claimed Adelboden’s iconic GS crown for the fifth successive time, before completing the Lauberhorn Downhill quadruple in Wengen – something no skier has ever achieved in the race’s 59-year history.

As if those heralded victories on home snow were not enough, Odermatt moved across the border and finally won on the Streif. It may not have been the Kitzbühel Downhill triumph that the Swiss man wants so much – he ended second in that race for the third time – but a win in the Hahnenkamm Super-G was still a mighty fine result.

Next came the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, and while silver in the GS and the Team Combined, plus bronze in the Super G was not all that what Odermatt wanted, three medals from four races would have satisfied most.

Returning to World Cup action in style, with a ninth win of the season coming in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Downhill, Odermatt powered his way to the Overall, the Downhill and the Super G Crystal Globes.

The numbers behind these titles underline just what they mean. A fifth Overall crown (with Odermatt’s secured in succession) lifts him into a tie with Marc Girardelli (LUX) in second-place on the all-time men’s list. Leader Marcel Hirscher (NED/Van Deer) will no doubt be getting concerned, with the Swiss man now just three behind his record tally.

In the Super G, Odermatt joined compatriot Pirmin Zurbriggen and Austrian Hermann Maier as the only men to ever win four consecutive Globes. While his two Super G victories took him to a career tally of 17, level with Aksel Lund Svindal (NOR) in second place on that all-time list, seven behind Maier.

The only blip came in the GS, where a combination of Olympic champion Pinheiro Braathen’s brilliance (two wins and three second places in his final five races) plus a slight dip in Odermatt’s form as spring sprung (no podiums in his final three starts and a DNF when the title was on the line at the World Cup Finals) sent the title to Brazil for the first time ever. Despite this disappointment, Odi ends the season on 29 career GS wins, as he chases down the only people in front of him in that list: Hirscher (31) and Ingemar Stenmark (46).

 Lasting legacy

It is in the Downhill however, where Odermatt’s evolution into his generation’s unrivalled all-rounder is most pronounced.

Consider this: in 2020/21, the season in which Odermatt finished on the podium in a Globe race for the first time (second in the Super G, GS and Overall) the Stöckli man ended 16^th in the Downhill standings. Add on the fact that after first winning in the Super G in 2019 and in the GS a year later, Odi did not climb to the top step of a Downhill podium until 2024. But since then, the curve has veered dramatically upwards.

A first Downhill Globe arrived in March 2024 and since then no one has got near him.

Four wins - including that key Garmisch-Partenkirchen triumph - and three podiums this season delivering a third title in a row, by a massive margin of 191 points.

He was even just 0.07 seconds away in Kitzbühel from matching his childhood hero Zurbriggen’s long-standing Swiss record of five Downhill victories in a single season.

Add on the fact he is now the proud owner of 102 World Cup podium places – the most by any Swiss skier – plus his 54 World Cup wins put him just one behind Vreni Schneider in the Swiss all-time winner’s list, and the argument that he is his nation’s greatest ever gathers weight.

"To be so consistent in every race and in every condition, to fight for the top spot every week and in every race with all the pressure makes me proud,” Odermatt said.