Gut-Behrami has found the perfect recipe: “Valon has helped me enormously”

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Lara Gut-Behrami (32) shakes her head. “If a rider starts the Olympics and says she would be willing to break both legs to win a gold medal, I can’t understand that. I’d rather forego an Olympic title and be healthy the next morning.”

Has the woman from Ticino ever heard a driver say something like that? She doesn’t reveal that. And yet her words express what is most important to her in the latter part of her career: winning, yes – but not at any cost.

Gut-Behrami has a huge opportunity in Crans-Montana USA. She knows that the red carpet has been rolled out for her second final victory at the World Cup. This is because Mikaela Shiffrin (28, USA) is missing due to an injury. The Ticino woman is currently five points ahead – she has the class and form to make it a three-figure number. “It doesn’t matter if it’s steep, whether it turns or not – I’ve been comfortable on skis 99 percent of the time for years,” she says. But simply: she doesn’t want to dominate.

There are also days she has to go through

Gut-Behrami was seriously injured twice in her career: in 2009 to her hip and in 2017 to her knee. Before, in between and even afterwards her motto was: full throttle. By marrying ex-Nati captain Valon Behrami (38) in the summer of 2018, she understood that she was endangering herself. «Valon helped me a lot. I know now: there are days you have to get through because the circumstances are not good. Then the most important thing is that you cross the finish line healthy.”

Statistics show that her sentences are not just empty words: she has never fallen since December 2021, which corresponds to 63 accident-free races. In times when many top female drivers are injured, that is something: impressive. Gut-Behrami emphasizes that she should not be distracted from the track; it is important to save as much energy as possible. This is not easy, especially in Crans-Montana.

“As if there were 200 points instead of 100”

“As great as home races are, skiing sometimes becomes almost irrelevant. There are so many fans there, there are press conferences and there are thousands of people from the association there.” Everything is much more intense. “And suddenly you feel like there are 200 points per race instead of 100,” says Gut-Behrami.

She is convinced that she has found the perfect recipe for a good energy balance. ‘I feel like I have everything in my hands. That is a huge difference from the past.”

Source : Blick