Marco Odermatt underlined his dominance in men’s ski racing on Saturday by breaking the 23-year-old male record for most World Cup points in a single season.
The Swiss standout won his last race of the season, the giant slalom at the World Cup final, by a massive 2.11 seconds over second-place Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway.
The win extended Odermatt’s tally to 2,042 points and surpassed the previous mark of 2,000 set by Austrian great Hermann Maier in the 1999–2000 season.
“Sorry, Hermann,” Odermatt quipped in a post-race interview with Austrian TV, adding the record meant “a lot” to him.
“In the past, I always said: no no, not so important, just the numbers,” Odermatt said. “But as I felt the pressure again today, I knew what I said was more important than what I said. I’m so glad it worked.
Maier wrote on his website last week that he expected Odermatt to overtake him.
“In my view, Marko has not even reached his peak and can still improve, especially in the downhill,” Maier said.
Theoretically, Odermatt had a chance to add even more points in Sunday’s season-ending slalom, but he ruled it out because he has never raced in that event at the World Cup level.
The overall record, among men and women, is held by Slovenian standout Tina Maze, who earned 2,414 points when she won the women’s overall title in 2013.
Odermatt, the reigning Olympic champion, achieved another best mark with his 13th win of the season. No male skier has ever won more races in a single campaign, and only Meier, Ingmar Stenmark, and Marcel Hirscher had achieved the feat in the past.
The overall record here is held by Mikaela Shiffrin, who won 17 times on her way to the 2018–19 women’s overall title.
Odermatt had already successfully defended his overall title and secured the Super-G and GS discipline globes.
“I was expecting a final without any pressure, but today I felt it again,” he said. “It wasn’t easy today, I was nervous again because of those 2,000 points. Now with another win, more than two seconds ahead, I don’t know what to say.”
On Saturday, the Swiss standout posted the second-fastest time in his final run as he built on his clear lead from the first run when he was 1.09 seconds faster than Alexis Pinturault. The French skier then dropped to eighth place.
Kristofferson managed only eighth place after the opening stage before climbing up to the second place. Austria’s Marco Schwarz finished third in 2.29s.