Alpine Skiing

Sport Overview

Alpine Skiing at Milano Cortina 2026

Venues: Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre (women), Stelvio Ski Centre (men)

Competition Dates: February 7-12, 14-16, 18 (Days 1-6, 8-10, 12)

Events: 10 (5 men, 5 women)

There are eight individual Olympic alpine skiing events, four each for men and women. These events can generally be divided into speed and technical categories. New at Milano Cortina 2026 will be a team combined event for each gender, which includes both speed and technical skiing.

Downhill involves the highest speeds and the biggest risks. It features the greatest vertical drop (up to 1100m for men and up to 800m for women) over which skiers can reach speeds up to 130 km/hr, while facing flats, jumps, shallow dips and challenging turns.

Super-G (from the longer form super giant slalom) has a slightly lower vertical drop than the downhill but includes more gates requiring more technical skill.

For both of those speed events, the winner is the skier with the fastest time over a single run.

In giant slalom, the vertical drop isn’t as big as the downhill or super-G, but there is a combination of long, medium and short turns to navigate through the gates.

The shortest alpine event is slalom, which consists of the lowest vertical drop but the most gates, requiring mass amounts of technical skill.

For both of those technical events, skiers do two runs over different courses on the same hill, with the fastest cumulative time winning.

The alpine combined, in which individual skiers had to be well rounded enough to do one run of downhill or super-G and then one run of slalom, has been replaced by a team combined event. A team is made up of two skiers of the same gender, one who specializes in downhill or super-G and one who specializes in slalom. The team with the fastest aggregate time from the two runs is the winner.

Canadian Olympic Alpine Skiing History (Pre-Milano Cortina 2026)

Canada has won 12 Olympic medals since alpine skiing debuted at Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936.

It’s the women who have dominated Canada’s Olympic medal count in alpine skiing, starting with Lucile Wheeler who won downhill bronze at Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956. Anne Heggtveit got the first gold four years later in the slalom at Squaw Valley 1960.

Nancy Greene was Canada’s first double medallist in alpine skiing, winning giant slalom gold and slalom silver at Grenoble 1968. Karen Percy has a pair of bronze medals from Calgary 1988, in the downhill and super-G.

Gold medals were also won by Kathy Kreiner in the giant slalom at Innsbruck 1976 and Kerrin Lee-Gartner in the downhill at Albertville 1992.

James (Jack) Crawford won Canada’s first ever Olympic alpine skiing medal in a combined event when he won bronze in the men’s alpine combined at Beijing 2022.

Before that, Jan Hudec won super-G bronze at Sochi 2014 for Canada’s first Olympic alpine skiing medal since Edi Podivinsky won downhill bronze 20 years earlier at Lillehammer 1994. The only other Canadian man with an Olympic alpine medal is Steve Podborski, who also won downhill bronze at Lake Placid 1980.

Olympic Alpine Skiing History

Alpine skiing has always had a gender balanced event program at the Olympic Winter Games.

When alpine skiing made its Olympic debut at Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936, there was just one combined event for each gender. At St. Moritz 1948, separate downhill and slalom events joined the combined event on the program. At Oslo 1952, the combined event was removed in favour of the giant slalom.

The Olympic program remained unchanged until Calgary 1988 when the combined event came back and the super-G was added. A mixed team event (featuring slalom skiers racing head-to-head on parallel courses) was included at both PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022.