Skitopper is defending champion in Killington (US): “It doesn’t matter whether I win one race more or less”

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The number is impressive: 38. That is the number of World Cup victories that Lara Gut-Behrami (32) has achieved so far. She is in seventh place in the women’s best list. Only one Swiss woman has won more times: ski legend Vreni Schneider (55 wins).

Will triumph number 39 follow for the Ticino woman in Killington (USA)? She won at the same venue a year ago, although the relatively flat course in the state of Vermont is not suited to her – there are some transitions, but nowhere close to a steep slope like in Sölden (Austria), where Gut-Behrami swung the top at the beginning of the season.

“If she can no longer win, she will stop.”

The fact is: the world champion and Olympic champion is not interested in records. “It doesn’t matter whether I win a race more or less,” she thinks. What does she mean? Of course also considering the fact that she will one day take a step back and look back on her career. “Soon I will be able to do something else. Every now and then I think about retirement and what it will be like afterwards,” she explained before the start of the season.

Yet it is not that far yet. “The truth is, I ask myself every day: What can I do to be successful.” Gut-Behrami doesn’t have to worry too much at the moment: she has proven what she can do on the Rettenbach Glacier. Legendary trainer Karl Frehsner (84) says: “Lara doesn’t just go along. She wants to win. When she can no longer do that, she stops.”

She accepts the stress of traveling

Gut-Behrami’s fire for ski racing still burns. “I am willing to accept the current efforts for a few more years,” she says. Yet it is not easy when her husband Valon Behrami’s (38) children come home at the weekend, but she is almost never there. “You have to give up a lot.”

The fact is: Gut-Behrami has a lot going on right now. After Killington we go to Mont-Tremblant (Ka) for the next giant slalom. Then follows the return journey to Switzerland, where downhill training awaits in St. Moritz GR. “There’s not much more to it than eating, packing and traveling,” she says.

Source : Blick