Alpine Skiing at the 1968 Winter Olympics

The big story in Alpine skiing coming into the Grenoble Games was Jean-Claude Killy. Acclaimed as the greatest skier in the world, the question was if Killy could duplicate Toni Sailer’s feat from 1956 and win all three Alpine events. In the end, he would come through but not without significant controversy in the slalom.

There was one major change to the program in 1968. For the first time the men’s giant slalom was contested over two runs. This would not occur for women until 1980. In the men’s slalom there was again a qualifying round, as in 1964, but the format was slightly different. In 1968, the qualifying consisted of separating the skiers into 17 heats. All skiers had two runs to qualify, with the top two in each heat in the first run, and the winner of each heat in the second run advancing to the final two runs. All the 1968 Alpine events took place at Chamrousse, a ski resort above Grenoble which stood at the junction of two mountains, the Recoin and the Roche Béranger.