Saturday, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Jackie Wiles made a symbolic return to the venue that once shook her Olympic dreams, finishing 21st in the downhill and matching her best result at the venue.

Four years ago, Wiles found herself in a similar position at the start of the Kandahar, with drastically different results. She crashed hard in the final downhill competition before the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, suffering fractures to her tibia and fibula, as well as cruciate ligament tears. Her crash was devastating to the then 25-year-old, who had been riding a season of career highs following a podium in Cortina and a top-five in Lake Louise.

Wiles spent years fighting to recover from her injuries, just to make it back on snow. At one point in her recovery, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to ski again. Posting a point-scoring finish in Garmisch on the brink of the Winter Olympic Games Beijing 2022 shows just how far the now 29-year-old has come.

“Today meant a lot to me,” commented Wiles. “Coming back, racing the Garmisch downhill four years later after my crash pre-Olympics, feels like I can finally put it behind me. I was happy with my skiing today and had some fast sections. It wasn’t the result I had entirely hoped for, but excited to take confidence and momentum into Beijing.”

Wiles' teammate Alix Wilkinson also posted a point-scoring finish, in 24th. In the absence of Breezy Johnson, who had to withdraw from the upcoming Winter Olympic Games due to a persistent knee injury, 21-year-old Wilkinson will punch her ticket to the Games for the first time. Wilkinson carries the momentum of a top 25 in Garmisch and a top 20 finish in Cortina in the Games, two of her best results she has seen in the World Cup downhill thus far.

In the notable absence of both Johnson and current downhill leader Sofia Goggia of Italy, due to injury, Saturday saw Switzerland’s Corrine Suter and Jasmine Flury take the top two spots on the podium, followed by Austria’s Cornelia Huetter in third. American Keely Cashman finished outside the points by seven hundredths in 31st. Tricia Mangan finished 36th.

Following Sunday’s super G in Garmisch, the women’s speed circuit will join their fellow competitors in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games before returning to the World Cup circuit in March.

RESULTS 
Women’s downhill

STANDINGS
Women’s downhill
Women’s overall

HOW TO WATCH

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022
5:30 a.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Women's Super-G - LIVE, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GER, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live, Streaming Peacock

Current television broadcast and streaming schedules for all sports are available here.

Sport-specific broadcast and streaming schedules are available below:

• Alpine
• Cross Country
• Freeski
• Freestyle
• Ski Jumping
• Nordic Combined
• Snowboard

Broadcast and streaming are updated on the U.S. Ski & Snowboard website throughout the season.

Streaming services and apps are third-party services and subject to such parties’ terms of use and data privacy. U.S. Ski & Snowboard disclaims any and all liability for use of third-party services and apps.

United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, in conjunction with U.S. Ski & Snowboard, today announced the addition of alpine skier Alix Wilkinson to the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team. 

She replaces the quota spot previously held by Breezy Johnson, who was injured on Jan. 21 in a downhill training run crash at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Wilkinson, 21, hails from Mammoth Lakes, Calif., and skied for Team Palisades Tahoe. She recently scored her first FIS Ski World Cup points, with a top 20 (18th place) finish in the Cortina d’Ampezzo downhill in just her seventh career World Cup start. She followed that up with some more World Cup points and a solid finish in 24th in Saturday's Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany downhill. 

Updated rosters can be found here, or at TeamUSA.org.

Watch Team USA compete on the networks of NBC throughout the Olympics, February 4-20, 2022. 

FOLLOW THE TEAM 
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Facebook @usskiandsnowboard
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Twitter @usskiteam

Mikaela Shiffrin led three Americans into the top 20, finishing fifth in the giant slalom on the challenging Erta slope in Kronplatz, Italy – the final FIS Ski World Cup women's tech race before Beijing 2022. Nina O'Brien fought back into the top 15, finishing 15th, while teammate Paula Moltzan was 17th. 

Shiffrin's Slovakian rival Petra Vlhova led the way first run, charging hard from bib 1, with Sweden's Sara Hector in second, followed by Shiffrin in third. France's Tessa Worley had a solid second run to move up to third, with Vlhova falling to second and Hector continuing her dominance in the discipline with her second-straight win and third victory of the season. 

Following the race, Shiffrin reflected on her performance. "Unfortunately, today’s race may have been a very big decider in the GS globe. But I suppose that the “race” is not over yet, so I’ll keep pushing," she said. "Now we fully shift focus to the Olympics. It’s been a stressful and tiring few weeks trying to get everything prepped for the trip to Beijing, with so much more to do than previous Games in the time of Covid and different travel logistics than we’ve dealt with before, plus trying to get it all sorted while on the road as foreigners in Europe since November. I’m looking forward to getting there safely—fingers crossed—and to finally be passed the 'organizational & prep' part of the process, and on to the actual skiing part of it."

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Mikaela Shiffrin ⛷💨 (@mikaelashiffrin)

Shiffrin continues to lead in the overall standings, with 1,026 points to Vlhova's 1,009. Hector extended her lead to 462 points in the giant slalom standings, while Worley jumped to second with 367, followed by Shiffrin in third with 361.

AJ Hurt also started for the Americans but narrowly missed qualification first run. Allie Resnick, who started in her first World Cup giant slalom race, did not finish the first run. The women's tech crew will take a few days off before heading to Beijing to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. 

RESULTS 
Women's giant slalom

STANDINGS
Overall
Giant Slalom

HOW TO WATCH
*All times EST

Please note: Streaming services and apps are third-party services and subject to such parties’ terms of use and data privacy. U.S. Ski & Snowboard disclaims any and all liability for use of third-party services and apps.

Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022
5:30 a.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Women's Downhill - LIVE, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GER, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live
6:30 a.m. FIS Snowboarding World Cup Snowboard Cross - LIVE, Cortina d'Ampezzo, ITA, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022
5:30 a.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Women's Super-G - LIVE, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GER, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live

Current television broadcast and streaming schedules for all sports are available here.

Sport-specific broadcast and streaming schedules are available below:

• Alpine
• Cross Country
• Freeski
• Freestyle
• Ski Jumping
• Nordic Combined
• Snowboard

Broadcast and streaming schedules are updated on a daily basis throughout the season.

Both Ben Ritchie and Luke Winters scored points for the United States in Tuesday's slalom under the lights in Schladming, Austria. 

Ritchie entered the second run sitting in 11th, wearing bib 44 – the highest-ranked bib that qualified for the second run. Some trouble on the course led him to end the day in 23rd, the first World Cup points of his career. Ritchie, who started his first World Cup in 2019, had struggled to finish a World Cup slalom until Tuesday.

"I feel pretty good after a long season of DNF's so far," said Ritchie. "I was happy with the first run and second run I was skiing well, had some mistakes...but it's nice to get some points under my belt and pick up a little momentum. But now that slalom January is over, I have to wait for a little while."

Winters, representing the U.S. men's slalom team at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, finished the day in 26th after edging his way into the flip. First run, Winters finished 30th.

In a magnificent conclusion to the men's jam-packed "slalom January," Linus Strasser became the first German ever to win the Schladming night slalom. Norway's Atle McGrath earned his first World Cup podium finishing second. Manuel Feller dominated the second run, jumping ahead 25 positions to end the day in third after finishing 28th first run.

Fellow American Jett Seymour did not finish. George Steffey and Alex Leever did not qualify for a second run.

Men's alpine will return to the World Cup circuit following Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, kicking off with two slalom races in Garmisch-Partenkirchen the weekend of Feb. 26-27.

RESULTS
Men's slalom

STANDINGS
Overall
Slalom

HOW TO WATCH
*All times EST. 

Please note: Streaming services and apps are third-party services and subject to such parties’ terms of use and data privacy. U.S. Ski & Snowboard disclaims any and all liability for use of third-party services and apps.

Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022
5:30 a.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Women's Downhill - LIVE, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GER, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022
5:30 a.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Women's Super-G - LIVE, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GER, Streaming Ski and Snowboard Live

Sport-specific broadcast and streaming schedules are available below:

• Alpine
• Cross Country
• Freeski
• Freestyle
• Ski Jumping
• Nordic Combined
• Snowboard

Broadcast and streaming schedules are updated daily throughout the season.

Sadly, downhiller and Olympic medal hopeful, Breezy Johnson, announced on Tuesday that she will sit out of the upcoming Olympic Games due to a knee injury sustained at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. 

In a post on Instagram, she shared, 

I have to announce that I have unfortunately injured my knee and must withdraw from the Olympics. It was the pleasure of my life to represent @teamusa at the Games in 2018. And all I have wanted ever since was to come back, stronger, faster, to win a gold medal. But I crashed in Cortina the other day and immediately felt a massive crack in my knee. It was a large chunk of cartilage that is partially dislodged. I was given the option to try to compete on it. But I don't think that that is realistic or smart. I could do more damage and I certainly don't think I will be skiing my best.

Johnson, who was seventh in the downhill at PyeongChang in 2018, was a favorite—along with Italy's Sofia Goggia, who was also injured recently at Cortina—for the downhill win in Beijing.
 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Breezy Johnson (@breezyjohnsonski)

As Bill Pennington from the New York Times wrote in his exclusive, 

The recovery Johnson faces will not be her first comeback from serious injury. She had to recover from a tibial plateau fracture to make the U.S. ski team competing in Pyeongchang. Seven months after those Olympics, she ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in training and missed the entire World Cup season. In June 2019, she tore two ligaments in her left knee.

Now facing another reconstructive knee surgery, Johnson said she was motivated to make another comeback because so many other top racers had done so and gone on to record their greatest accomplishments. As an example, she mentioned Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who had his anterior cruciate ligament rebuilt last year after a fall in training and is having a dominant season this winter.

“You see that and we’re all optimists, we all hope this injury is the last one,” Johnson said. “You go through periods of time where it breaks your heart and it crushes you because the sport will never love you back. It just can’t because it’s a sport. But you love it so much you do it anyway.”

Johnson will be cheering on her teammates and looking ahead on her road to recovery, once again. 

Read the full story at NYTimes.com.

Four Americans broke into the top 25 in the second Kitzbuehel downhill of the weekend, led by Travis Ganong in 11th. Bryce Bennett was 0.12 seconds behind Ganong in 12th. Jared Goldberg matched his all-time best finish on the Streif in 19th, and Steven Nyman rounded out the day of point finishes for the U.S. men in 21st. 

Heavy snowfall let up from Friday and Saturday, allowing the downhill to start from its traditional start house on Sunday. But in exchange for a cease in snowfall, the men had to battle heavy cloud coverage that made an already intimidating Hahnenkamm track even more fearsome. Racers flew through the Mausefalle jump in a cloud, fighting fog and flat light on top of the already wild terrain throughout the entirety of the course. 

Switzerland’s Beat Fuez and Marco Odermatt skied fearlessly to come out on top, finishing first and second respectively. Austria’s Daniel Hemetsberger followed close behind in third. Friday's winner, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, finished in sixth but continues to lead the men's downhill standings over Fuez.

Fellow Americans Sam Morse finished just outside of the points in 35th. Erik Arvidsson finished his first World Cup downhill in Kitzbuehel in 43rd. Ryan Cochran-Siegle did not finish.

The men's speed crew will now take a short break before heading to Beijing to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. 

RESULTS 
Men's downhill

STANDINGS
Overall
Downhill

HOW TO WATCH
*All times EST

Please note: Streaming services and apps are third-party services and subject to such parties’ terms of use and data privacy. U.S. Ski & Snowboard disclaims any and all liability for use of third-party services and apps.

Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022
2:00 p.m. FIS Alpine World Cup Men’s Downhill - delayed broadcast, Kitzbuehel, AUT, Broadcast CNBC

Current television broadcast and streaming schedules for all sports are available here.

Sport-specific broadcast and streaming schedules are available below:

• Alpine
• Cross Country
• Freeski
• Freestyle
• Ski Jumping
• Nordic Combined
• Snowboard

Broadcast and streaming schedules are updated on a daily basis throughout the season.