No sun, humidity and pain: Ski star Gut-Behrami thought about being fired in Argentina: “I wondered: do I still want this?”

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Time is ticking – also for Lara Gut-Behrami. At the age of 32, the Ticino native is in the autumn of her career. “Soon I will be able to do something else. “My daily life will no longer just revolve around one activity,” she says. In one, two or three years? Last February, after a medal-less World Championships in Méribel (Friday), Gut-Behrami said that these would not be her last title matches. That she didn’t want to stop like that. “Maybe I just said that because I didn’t want to admit to myself that it would be over soon. That way I could motivate myself.”

Will Gut-Behrami resign soon? There will be neither World Championships nor Olympic Games next winter before the next big event, the World Cup in Saalbach (Austria) in 2025, is just around the corner. Gut-Behrami isn’t thinking about that yet, she’s taking it one winter at a time. At the same time, she admits that she had some fundamental thoughts over the summer. “The sun never shone during the training camp in Argentina. It was damp, which made my knees ache. Then I wondered: what am I doing here? Does it make sense? Do I even want this anymore?”

“I want to win”

Two weeks later the picture was completely different. Gut-Behrami trained in Zermatt – in the sun and on perfect slopes. “Then I felt again how much I wanted to ski.” Now she is ready to translate the work into good results – even without the World Cup and the Olympic Games. «I want to take advantage of the years ahead of me. And win.”

Gut-Behrami has regularly proven in recent years that she can still do that: no other Swiss woman has won more often. She now has 37 World Cup victories to her name, only six riders in the history of the sport have preceded her. There is also an overall World Cup victory (2016), World Cup gold (2021) and Olympic gold (2022). Last winter she won the small crystal ball in the Super-G World Cup.

Eating, sleeping, skiing – nothing else

Even now, Gut-Behrami is willing to invest everything. “Even if that means eating, sleeping, skiing.” Her family would understand this and always help her. At the same time, Gut-Behrami is aware of her unwillingness to compromise. “I’m quite radical. But if you look at which riders were still at the forefront of ski racing at age 32 or 33, they were the ones who were very determined.” The truth is, she thinks every day about what she can do to get better.

Gut-Behrami doesn’t seem stubborn when she says this. On the contrary. New Swiss alpine director Hans Flatscher says: “It is important that Lara stays healthy and can maintain her joy and passion. And we try to create the environment she needs.” At least his athlete is prepared, the knee pain in Argentina is nothing to worry about.

“I won’t miss the pressure”

And what if one day she decides to give up her skis? Gut-Behrami doesn’t know yet what she will do, but what she won’t miss. “I wake up every day and know I have to be healthy. That takes a lot of energy. I’m always judged on my performance and if I have problems I have to solve them, which is incredible pressure.”

Source : Blick