Alpine skiing-One last chance: Odermatt chases gold in giant slalom showdown

BORMIO, Italy, Feb 13 : Two souvenirs - one silver and one bronze - would send most Olympians home happy. Unless, of course, your name happens to be Marco Odermatt.

In the build-up to the Milano-Cortina Olympics the question many were asking was how many gold medals the 28-year-old Swiss might claim on Bormio's fabled Stelvio.

Instead, it is Odermatt's young teammate Franjo von Allmen who has stolen the show by winning a magnificent treble in the downhill, team combined and super-G.

Odermatt, the dominant force in men's Alpine ski racing for the past five seasons and holder of 53 World Cup wins across multiple disciplines, has one more chance to strike gold in Saturday's giant slalom, the event he won at Beijing 2022.

Even if he wins on Saturday in a race that is likely to be wide open, Odermatt will surely return with a tinge of disappointment having finished fourth in the race he had really prioritised, the downhill.

He shrugged that off to claim a silver in the combined alongside Loic Meillard, and he was third in the super-G. A giant slalom win would complete the medal set.

"I'm satisfied, but not overjoyed," Odermatt, who is on course to win the World Cup overall title for a fifth successive season, said after Wednesday's super-G. "I missed my clear goal of winning gold."

It means the pressure will be on for Saturday's two-legged technical event.

"Ultimately, he's human too," Italy's 11-time World Cup-winning slalomist Giorgio Rocca told Swiss website tio.ch looking ahead to the race.

"He's always up there among the best, but he's probably not as mentally relaxed today and can't ski as he'd like. When he wants to push, that instinct that usually comes easily to him probably comes a little less easily today."

Giant slalom is