Alpine Skiing at the 2022 Winter Olympics

The Alpine skiing venue for the 2022 Games was built in Yanqing, about 90 kilometres from Beijing centre. In the tradition of previous Olympics, the Alpine skiing slopes were designed by Bernhard Russi, this time assisted by Didier Défago. China had no history in Alpine skiing. They had never won any World Cup points, and never hosted a World Cup race, with the scheduled races for February 2020, as pre-Olympic races, being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The resort was opened in 2019 and was the biggest Alpine skiing area in China at that time, but with less snow. That area of China was not known for a lot of snow, so all of the slopes had to be built using man-made snow. Another problem was the permanent wind, which also brought sand from the near Gobi desert to the slopes, which caused very unusual circumstances. The program was unchanged with the team event held for the second time, after its début in 2018. A new event, the parallel giant slalom, was introduced at the World Championship in 2021, but was not part of the Beijing Olympic programme.

The starting order for speed events was unchanged from the last two Olympics. The top 10 racers of the World Cup Starting List (WCSL), beginning with the leader, could choose an odd bib number from 1-19, while the next ten racers from the WCSL could choose an even bib number from 2-20.

The qualification process started on 1 July 2019 and ended on 16 January 2022. The quota places had been lowered to 306 (from 320 in 2018) but still allowed almost every nation to enter at least one male and one female athlete. This turned out (again) to be a problem for the top nations as only Switzerland was able to gain the maximum of 22 spots – 11 per gender, as for the first time the quota had to be gender equal. On 24 January 2022 the IOC reallocated four more spots for men, which also allowed Austria to enter the maximum of 22. In total 83 NOCs qualified at least one athlete and, of them, a record number of 81 competed, which was one country more than in 2018. Only the skiers from Armenia and North Macedonia qualified but did not start. Two nations competed at the Winter Olympics for the first time, Saudi-Arabia with Fayik Abdi and Haiti with Richardson Viano. Jamaica took part for the first time in Alpine skiing and Ecuador, Kosovo, and Malaysia sent their first female Winter Olympians to the Games and all three competed in Alpine skiing. Chinese Taipei, Israel, and Luxembourg had their first ever female Alpine skiers at the Olympics, and Hong Kong, China entered its first male Alpine skier. For the first time, the attempt to get the number of athletes gender equal almost succeeded. Of the 299 participants there were 152 men and a record number 147 women.

The most successful athletes at this Games came from Austria with Johannes Strolz (2-1-0) and Katharina Liensberger (1-1-0). Remarkably, also Matthias Mayer (Super G) and Michelle Gisin (Alpine combined) were two athletes able to repeat their wins from PyeongChang four years earlier. Surprising performances came from Barnabás Szőllős of Israel who finished sixth in the Alpine combined, and Joan Verdú from Andorra who placed ninth in the giant slalom. Another surprise was that Mikaela Shiffrin did not win any medal at these Games as she did not finish any race in all of her three best disciplines. A milestone was set by Johan Clarey, who became the oldest ever Alpine skiing medallist at the Olympics, aged 41-030, when winning silver in the downhill.

Eleven different nations won medals, the highest number since 1992, when it had been 12. Switzerland broke a record as the first nation to win six gold medals in Alpine skiing at the same Winter Games. Slovakia won its first ever Alpine skiing medal as Petra Vlhová took gold in the women’s slalom. The most successful manufacture was Head, winning half of all Alpine skiing medals, with 6-4-5 followed by Rossignol 2-3-2, with another two Stöckli, and Dynastar winning one gold medal, and Atomic (0-3-2), and Völkl (0-0-1) also winning medals.