Combined, Women

This was the last individual Alpine skiing event in Beijing and like the men’s Alpine Combined it saw an all-time low of just 26 competitors. Only Italy and the United States entered the allowed maximum of four athletes per nation. There was no Alpine Combined event held, or even scheduled, for the ongoing World Cup season, or for the 2020/21 season either. The last event of this type in the World Cup was seen in February 2020 and was won by Federica Brignone. In total Brignone had won the last four World Cup Combined events and was unbeaten since March 2018. At the last two World Championships since the 2018 Olympics, the gold medals had been won by Wendy Holdener (2019) and Mikaela Shiffrin (2021).

The downhill element in Beijing was won by Christine Scheyer with Ester Ledecká second, and Ramona Siebenhofer third. Shiffrin put in a good performance and finished fifth as the best placed of the favourites with the other medal contenders being placed eighth (Brignone), 11th (Holdener) and 12th (Gisin). Those four were separated by only 0.44 seconds. In the slalom element, Shiffrin started as fifth but was again not able to finish the race as in the giant slalom and slalom days before, so she did not finish in her three best events.

It was Brignone who took over from the then leader Ledecká, but Holdener was 1.10 seconds faster in her slalom run to become the new leader. Her compatriot Gisin started just behind her and was again more than a second faster in the slalom to achieve the best run time and go on to win gold. The second-best slalom time was set by Katharina Huber but her margin after the downhill was too much to make up and she was only able to finish fifth overall.

Gisin repeated her win from 2018 in this event to become the first Swiss Alpine skier (women or men) to do so. She became the fourth woman to win back-to-back titles in Alpine skiing at the Olympics after Katja Seizinger (downhill 1994 and 1998), Deborah Compagnoni (giant slalom 1994 and 1998), and Janica Kostelić (combined 2002 and 2006). The one-two finish for Switzerland was their first ever in this event and only their third in Olympic history. The last time this happened for them was in downhill 1984 with Michela Figini and Maria Walliser.

All three 2022 medallists had already won a medal here in Beijing earlier, and all three did it in different events with Gisin in Super G, Holdener in slalom, and Brignone in giant slalom. Manufacture Rossignol took gold and bronze and silver went to Head.