Olympics: Swiss von Allmen continues golden streak with Super‑G win

Keystone / Michael Buholzer

Switzerland’s Franjo von Allmen has won his third gold medal of his debut Olympics after topping the times in the men’s Super‑G. No Swiss athlete had ever won three golds at a single Winter Games before him.

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Olympic debutant Franjo von Allmen has turned himself into one of Switzerland’s standout performers at the Winter Olympics, claiming three titles in just five days. The 24‑year‑old from Bern added Super‑G gold to his wins in the downhill and the team combined. Marco Odermatt took bronze.

After von Allmen crossed the line and eased to a stop, the look on his face said it all: he wasn’t convinced his Super‑G run would be enough to keep his remarkable streak going. The skier from the Bernese Oberland later admitted he had actually expected his third Olympic race to be his first “without a medal”.

But von Allmen, who had set off early with start number seven despite being one of the favourites, had underestimated just how strong his run really was. From the outside it looked fast, fluid and tidy, even if he was only 13 hundredths of a second ahead of American Ryan Cochran‑Siegle at the finish.

Von Allmen enters the record books

“Right now,” von Allmen says, “everything is just clicking for me. To finish it off with Super‑G gold is just incredible.” It was a fitting finale: in his first three Olympic starts, the 24‑year‑old has now collected three gold medals. In the space of just five days, he has written a new chapter in Swiss sporting history. No Swiss athlete, man or woman, had ever won three golds at a single Winter Games before him.

In fact, beyond von Allmen, only three other Swiss winter athletes have ever collected three or more Olympic titles: ski jumper Simon Ammann (double gold in both 2002 and 2010), cross‑country skier Dario Cologna (two titles in 2014 and one each in 2010 and 2018) and alpine great Vreni Schneider, who won twice in 1988 and once in 1994.

Von Allmen has also joined a select group on the global stage. Before him, only three alpine skiers had ever won three gold medals at a single Winter Games: Janica Kostelic in 2002, Jean‑Claude Killy in 1968 and Toni Sailer in 1956.

Odermatt completes his Olympic medal set

Odermatt, the dominant Super‑G skier of the past four years, was still a tenth of a second up at the first split. After 55 seconds on the course, the skier from Nidwalden was only four hundredths behind. But by the finish, the gap had stretched to 28 hundredths, leaving him third, behind Ryan Cochran‑Siegle, who had already taken Super‑G silver at Beijing 2022.

Odermatt’s disappointment was obvious as soon as he finished. But as the race unfolded, the 28‑year‑old could be increasingly confident he would hang on to bronze by just 0.03 seconds over France’s Nils Allègre in fourth. “An Olympic bronze is always worth having,” he said. “Of course I’d hoped it might be enough to fight for the win, but Franjo is in unbelievable form at the moment.”

Like von Allmen, he now has three Olympic medals. On Monday, Odermatt and Loïc Meillard took silver in the team combined, finishing behind the duo of von Allmen and Tanguy Nef. And four years ago in China he won giant slalom gold, meaning he now holds the full set of Olympic medals.

Translated from German by AI/sp

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