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Switzerland’s Loic Meillard might’ve felt like a bridesmaid on Friday and Saturday, playing second fiddle to teammate Marco Odermatt’s back-to-back remarkable wins in the giant slalom during 2024 World Cup Aspen competition.
But in Sunday’s final event, Meillard got his first chair and white dress. The 27-year-old earned the distinction of the lone competitor to medal in all three events in Aspen this weekend. He won silver in both giant slaloms before breaking through the snowstorm on Sunday to win the slalom.
“Special weekend,” Meillard said. “Definitely long, tired today but tough conditions, tough slalom and I managed to show my best skiing.”
Likely overshadowed by what Odermatt’s doing — his back-to-back golds in dramatic fashion in the GS set him just two straight wins behind Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 14 consecutive wins in a single discipline — Meillard took the spotlight with his teammate’s weekend over.
Meillard won his first World Cup slalom gold medal and his sixth podium finish in the event. Overall, it’s his 19th podium and third first place. This season, it’s his fifth piece of hardware.
France’s Clement Noel set the time to beat in the first run on Sunday morning as snow continued to fall at varying rates, with a time of 52.39 down the course. Meillard came in second, 27-hundredths of a second behind, but third place Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway was more than a full second behind, giving the top two a decided edge for the podium in the second run.
Meillard’s standing in the second run fell as the course proved faster for most athletes in the second run. Despite trimming more than 2.5 seconds from his first run, his time was only eighth best in the second run. Bibbo Award winner — for most improved start ranking to finish position — Laurie Taylor of Great Britain posted the fastest second run at 49.43 seconds.
But the first-run advantage propped up Meillard, putting him in a familiar position. In Friday’s GS, Meillard was in the leader’s chair off the finish area with only one skier to go. Then Odermatt made an incredibly acrobatic recovery and walked-off the race with the winning run, bumping Meillard to silver.
On Sunday, Meillard watched from the finish area with only Noel left to race after he completed his run. The Frenchman skied off the course in the second section to take a Did Not Finish, giving Meillard the win.
Joining Meillard on the podium were Germany’s Linus Strasser in second and Kristofferson in third.
In the second run, American Luke Winters also took a DNF in the last few gates near the finish line. But on the first run, reminiscent of Friday’s race, 25 of 65 starters DNFed in the first run. The highly technical discipline, however, sees many more skiers bow out regularly than GS, and losing roughly a third of the field has been normal this season.
Skiers noted that the course held out OK during the event despite heavy snow the night before. Course crews were out at 3 a.m. Sunday working to clear the accumulation.
“One, it’s impressive we even got to pull off a race today with the help of the course crew and it’s been especially impressive how good the snow really was,” said U.S. skier River Radamus, the last starter in the first run. Radamus is a native of Steamboat Springs who now lives in Edwards.
“There was definitely a rut, a groove and a lot of chop, but that was to be expected,” he said.
A commonality between Radamus and Meillard was that both athletes started in all of the three events this weekend. Many athletes competed in just the GS or the slalom, but not both, giving especially the slalom-only skiers an edge over the ones that competed twice already this weekend in races that Odermatt called the hardest of the season.
“It’s definitely tough, but I love that,” Radamus said of racing in three events. “I think the toughest conditions, the toughest hills and the most demanding schedules bring out the best racers.”
Meillard added that having a good race “makes everything OK” after a long weekend of racing.
“It takes energy, it takes focus and definitely today it was a long slalom run, difficult to ski so that makes it even a bit hard. You have to go deep into your body to take it and when you have a good race everything is OK,” Meillard said. “Before the first run I told myself, ‘OK, only two runs to push,’ and after the first run I said, ‘OK, one more run to push and then the weekend is over and you rest a bit,’ and that’s what I did.”
For Team USA, Radamus came just shy of threatening for the Bibbo by placing 34th after the first run, just outside the 30-skier cut. Winters (No. 23 after the first run), Jett Seymour (No. 21) and Benjamin Ritchie (No. 29) each made the second-run. Ritchie finished 27th and Seymour finished 25th in final results.
Sunday’s conclusion closes the book on the Aspen Winternational and the U.S. portion of the FIS Alpine World Cup circuit this season. The skiers head to Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, next weekend before the Saalbach tech week in Austria starting March 16 to conclude the season.