Switzerland wins team event at World Cup Finals

The Nations Team Event took center stage today at the FIS World Cup Finals in Meribel, France, with Switzerland surprising the seven-team field by racing to the win.

The team of Charlotte Chable, Michelle Gisin, Wendy Holdener, Gino Caviezel, Justin Mursier and Reto Schmidiger topped Germany, Italy and Sweden en route to the first-place finish.

The action-packed parallel event was filled with tight head-to-head battles among the seven competing nations. As the top-ranked team, Austria had a bye in the first round, but was ousted by the Swedes in the semifinals. With the Austrians out of the picture, and World Championship runner-up Canada not entering a team, the field was wide open for the race to the top step of the podium.

Germany, France and Slovenia all made first-round exits, leaving the semifinal match-ups of Austria against Sweden and Switzerland against Italy. The Swiss and Swedes earned victories and a berth into the finals, which the Swiss won on the last run in a closely contested race. Austria took third place in the small final against the Italians, keeping their podium streak alive.

A favorite of the athletes who have the rare opportunity to treat skiing as a team sport, the Nations Team Event also impressed the spectators with its ‘March Madness’ knock-out format. Austria has won a medal at every edition of the discipline since the event entered the World Championship program in 2005. In addition to Canada, the U.S. and Norway also opted not to participate.

Release courtesy of FIS