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Get in TouchIt was a busy day for the Canadian Alpine Ski Team in Europe on Saturday, with landmark results for Britt Richardson (Canmore, Alta.) and Cassidy Gray (Panorama, BC) in women’s giant slalom in Spindleruv Mlyn, CZE and four top-30 finishes for Canadian men in the famed Kitzbühel downhill.
Richardson, 22, skied to a season-best result on the Czech slope, finishing ninth after an impressive second run, which was the sixth fastest among the field. Her first run saw her in 16th, setting her up to chase the leader’s chair, where she sat briefly for the second straight day.
The ninth-place finish marked her eighth top-20 finish of her season, the first time she snuck into the top 10 and the second-best result of her career, only behind a seventh-place finish in Kronplatz, ITA in 2025. After a clean first run and an aggressive second run, she finished 3.19 seconds back of Sweden’s Sara Hector’s winning time and 2.96 seconds behind USA’s Mikaela Shiffrin for third.
“My mindset was just to fully charge. I knew I had the skiing in me, and I had a few really good days of training leading into this, so I had a lot of confidence from that, and the second set was better for me, so I knew I could really leave nothing behind,” Richardson said after the race.
“I finally found that flow that I've been missing for the other races this year. I started to see it a bit last year, at the end of the season, so it was really cool to find that feeling again; it's really like nothing else when you finally get that flow; it feels like you're in charge of the course, and you can really attack it.”
Her longtime teammate, Gray, finished 14th for a career-best, the second time she has cracked the top 20 since the calendar flipped to 2026 after a 16th-place finish in Kranjska Gora, SLO. The aggressive approach in her second run helped guide her to 0.83 seconds behind Richardson.
“I'm happy, but I do think there were some spots that I feel like I can improve on, which is honestly almost more reassuring, " Gray said. “I just have to have a lot of trust in myself. I have a constant mental battle with feeling confident, and everybody on the team, like staff, athletes, everyone has been really making an effort to kind of build me up, and I'm really appreciative of that, and I think that helped.”
“My coach has been trying to find the right words to use for me that trigger the right things, and we have landed on ‘violence’. So now, what they say to me all the time is, ‘Be violent, choose violence.’ It's kind of a funny thing, because it works and that's kind of my mindset moving forward.”
Valérie Grenier (St. Isidore, Ont.) and Justine Lamontagne (St-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Que.) also kicked out of Saturday’s start gate, but were unable to finish their opening run. The podium consisted of Sweden’s Hector with the win, Switzerland’s Camille Rast in second and the USA’s Shiffrin in third.
Now, the
Canadian skiers look to Sunday and the women’s slalom, while the next giant slalom race for some will be in Cortina d’Ampezzo as part of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games.
“It’s cool to have good results going into the Olympics. I think that's going to give me a lot of confidence going to that race, and I have a lot of time now, about three weeks, of just training, so I'm happy to finish off the last World Cup before the Olympics. Sorry, on a high note,” added Richardson. ”I'm going to really try to bring that confidence into it.”
A Staring Kitzbühel Return
Returning as the Kitzbühel downhill champion and third-place finishers from 2025, Jack Crawford (Toronto, Ont.) and Cameron Alexander (North Vancouver, BC) put in another year of strong skiing in Kitzbühel, but fell short of the podium in front of massive crowds at the bottom of the Hannenkahm.
Crawford, who became the fifth Canadian to win Kitzbühel in 2025, took an aggressive approach early in the race, finding a positive gap in the second interval and holding the green with a 0.25-second lead over eventual winner Giovanni Franzoni.
While the 28-year-old four-time World Cup podium finisher pushed through the middle of the course, he lost time on the flats, eventually putting up a time 1.65 seconds short of Franzoni’s win and 1.26 seconds short of the podium in 23rd place
Alexander kicked out of the start gate immediately after. Despite never seeing a positive split through his run, he impressed in the fourth of eight sectors, claiming the second fastest time through the interval, before bumps on chewed up snow in the final sections saw him finish 14th, 1.49 seconds back of the win.
For Alexander, the 14th-place finish marked his fifth time among the top 15 on Hahnenkamm Downhill, after third in 2025, fifth in 2024, and sixth in 2023. Meanwhile, Crawford’s 18th was his third top-20 on the Austrian downhill following his win in 2025 and a sixth-place finish in 2022.
Jeff Read (Camnore, Alta) and Brodie Seger (North Vancouver, BC) finished 27th and 29th, respectively, rounding out the four Canadians in the top 20. Meanwhile, Italian 24-year-old Franzoni’s win marked his first World Cup podium, with Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt and 35-year-old French veteran Maxence Muzaton claiming third from start number 29.
The men’s World Cup continues on Sunday with a slalom, before attention turns to the next speed races in Crans-Montana, SUI, from Jan. 30 - Feb. 1
Next races:
Men race SL in Kitzbühel (AUT) January 25
Women race SL in Spindleruv Mlyn (CZE) January 25
Para alpine head to Meribel (FRA) for slalom and giant slalom races from January 27-30
Ski cross race next in Val di Fassa (ITA) January 30 and 31
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