Andy Devaney
If alpine skiing weekends came with a receipt, HEAD would be returning home with a trolley full of podiums and a grin you could see from the top station. The headline act was the Špindlerův Mlýn GS, where Sweden’s Sara Hector finally turned near-misses into a season-opening win—then watched the rest of the Rebels pile into the frame across two countries and three disciplines like they’d booked the whole mountain.
HEAD Racing Director Rainer Salzgeber put the whole weekend in one neat, no-nonsense bow: “Sara Hector has regained her confidence. She is skiing at full speed again, which makes her one of the fastest. This is the perfect build-up to the Olympics. We had a sensational Slalom event with seven athletes in the top ten. Both runs were set to be extremely fast. Camille Rast did an excellent job,” said HEAD Racing Director Rainer Salzgeber. “The Kitzbühel weekend also went very well for us, apart from the Downhill.
We will never know what Franjo von Allmen could have managed in the Downhill, but he knows that he has the speed. Stefan Babinsky, on the podium for the second time in a row, is also very positive in the lead-up to the Olympics. And a podium for Linus Straßer, with his connection to Kitzbühel and new to the team, was also a very special result. It’s great that he takes his first podium for HEAD at such a major event. It shows that he is on the right track and that he is one of the fastest. That was a perfect finish to the weekend.”
Hector’s eighth World Cup win—and her first of the season
Saturday in the Czech Republic belonged to Hector. She set the tone early by posting the fastest first run in the Špindlerův Mlýn GS, then did the mature, slightly terrifying thing elite skiers do—protect a lead while still looking like they’re being chased by an angry swarm. Third-fastest on run two was enough to seal victory number eight in her World Cup career.
At the bottom, Hector explained the mindset that separates “nearly” from “nailed it”: “I watched Paula Moltzan’s run. Not everything was ideal on my run, which is why I went flat out. It worked, and the lower part was really good to ski. I am super happy. I’ve always done my best and I’m delighted with this result,” explained Sara Hector at the finish.
Rast closes in on the Giant Slalom World Cup fight
Camille Rast backed up her first-run promise with a strong second run to finish fourth overall—an important points haul that tightens the Giant Slalom World Cup picture. The Swiss skier now sits 89 points behind Julia Scheib, with Hector a further 42 points back in third.
Behind the headline names, the depth looked every bit as valuable as the sparkle. A J Hurt (8th) and Emma Aicher (10th) made the top ten, while a steady stream of Rebels banked points: Vanessa Kasper (11th), Stephanie Brunner (16th), Ilaria Ghisalberti (18th), Wendy Holdener (20th), Lena Dürr (22nd), Doriane Escane (24th) and Estelle Alphand (26th).
Sunday’s slalom: two on the podium, seven in the top ten
If the Špindlerův Mlýn GS was Hector’s statement, Sunday’s slalom was a team memo written in bold font. Rast finished second and Aicher third, with Rast charging from fourth after run one thanks to the second-fastest run-two time. It marked Rast’s eighth podium of the season and her fifth in slalom.
Aicher, meanwhile, continued a season-long habit of making podiums feel like a regular commute—this was slalom podium number three this winter after Levi and Courchevel.
And the supporting cast was not exactly shy. Seven HEAD athletes landed inside the top ten: Holdener (5th), Anna Swenn-Larsson (6th), Cornelia Öhlund (7th), Hector (9th) and Dürr (10th) alongside the two podium finishers. More points followed via Eliane Christen (16th), Escane (23rd) and Alphand (25th).
Kitzbühel Super-G: heartbreak in hundredths, joy in chamois
Over in Austria, Kitzbühel did its usual thing—turning gravity into a personality test. Friday’s men’s Super-G delivered two more podiums for the Rebels, with Franjo von Allmen second and Stefan Babinsky third. Von Allmen missed the win by three hundredths of a second, which in Kitzbühel terms is about the width of a polite sigh.
He sounded like a man who felt both emotions at once: “I was very disappointed at first. But standing on the podium with Marco gives you a great feeling, especially because there are only three hundredths of a second between us. It’s very nice to take a Kitzbühel chamois trophy home with you,” said Franjo von Allmen.
Babinsky made it back-to-back Super-G podiums after Wengen, describing that particular Kitzbühel cocktail of fear, speed and vague disbelief: “It is indescribable, an extremely exciting race! It was a pretty good run, apart from when I briefly snagged the wrong edge on the finishing slope. That was not the quickest way to the finish. I’m satisfied with my performance and skied well,” said Stefan Babinsky.
Straßer’s Kitzbühel slalom surge: from 10th to third
Sunday’s finale brought another podium—this time in the Kitzbühel slalom, where Linus Straßer climbed from tenth to third with the third-fastest second run. It was his first podium of the season, and his first for HEAD at one of the sport’s most unforgiving theatres.
Straßer summed it up like a man who knows form is nice, but timing is everything: “Things have gone well over the past few weeks. But you have to be able to take the pace you need into the race. That was my aim on the second run. And the result is the cherry on top. I knew that the run wasn’t all that bad, and at the bottom it was actually very good,” said Linus Straßer.
Armand Marchant took sixth for his best Kitzbühel result so far, with Paco Rassat 14th, Johannes Strolz and Benjamin Ritchie sharing 15th, Dave Ryding 20th, Albert Popov 22nd, Hans Grahl-Madsen 23rd, and Billy Major 24th.
The weekend in one breath
From the precision of the Špindlerův Mlýn GS to Kitzbühel’s high-wire chaos, HEAD’s Worldcup Rebels left the weekend with momentum, medals, and the sort of confidence that travels well—especially with the Olympics looming in the distance like the steepest pitch on the map.
