Andy Devaney
On a blue-riband Sunday in Crans Montana, Franjo von Allmen did what every downhill racer dreams of and every coach secretly prays for – he sent one clean, fearless, borderline outrageous run straight down the fall line and straight into the Olympic conversation. In the final World Cup Downhill before the Games, the 24-year-old Swiss star rocketed to victory on home snow, with HEAD teammate Ryan Cochran-Siegle joining him on the podium in third.
Redemption run after Wengen and Kitzbühel
If this felt like more than just another World Cup win for Franjo von Allmen, that’s because it was. The Swiss ace arrived in Crans Montana with a couple of bruises to his confidence after high-profile errors in Wengen and Kitzbühel – the sort of venues where mistakes are replayed more often than your favourite film.
HEAD Racing Director Rainer Salzgeber knew how big this one was, both for the athlete and the brand.
“This is a magnificent victory by Franjo. It’s very important following the highlight events in Wengen and Kitzbühel where he made mistakes in both competitions. He builds up incredible speed, and it was great to see him in action like that. I was really hoping today that he could nail this run without any mistakes. Now he can head to Bormio in full confidence,” said HEAD Racing Director Rainer Salzgeber.
“The second podium of the season for Ryan is also a very nice touch. He told me that previously he had been trying to apply too much pressure. He needed a different approach here in Crans Montana because of the layout of the course. Now he believes that he has found the right formula. He likes Bormio, and has skied fast there before. That’s why this is an important result for him.”
You could almost hear the collective exhale from the HEAD service truck. This was the version of Franjo von Allmen they’d been waiting to unleash: fast, aggressive, but finally mistake-free.
Fifth World Cup win for Franjo von Allmen
The stopwatch told its own love story. 65 hundredths of a second – that was the cushion Franjo von Allmen built over veteran downhill specialist Dominik Paris in second. In a discipline where victories are often measured in eyelashes, two-thirds of a second is practically a gap year.
For the man of the moment, this Crans Montana triumph marked:
- His fifth World Cup victory
- His fourth Downhill win
- His second Downhill victory of the season, after Val Gardena in December
- His second Downhill win in Crans Montana, repeating his success from 2025
Clearly, Franjo von Allmen and this Swiss piste are on first-name terms. Racing at home, he sounded both excited and disarmingly grounded at the finish.
“I felt really good about this, and that put me on my guard, too. I enjoyed skiing this run. Competing in front of my home crowd is something special, and there’s a superb atmosphere at this race. This is an important result right before the Olympic Games. It was a run that was more or less without mistakes, so I’m happy to take that with me,” said Franjo von Allmen at the finish, delighted.
Good, on guard, and almost mistake-free – that’s a trio most coaches would happily take to the Olympics.
Cochran-Siegle caps a HEAD podium charge
While Franjo von Allmen was stealing the headlines, Ryan Cochran-Siegle was quietly putting together the sort of season that makes equipment reps beam like proud parents. The American grabbed third place, just five hundredths shy of second, to claim his second Downhill podium of the winter after finishing runner-up in Beaver Creek back in December.
At 33, Cochran-Siegle has the look of a man who’s stopped trying to force it and started letting the skis do the talking – exactly what Salzgeber hinted at. A lighter touch on a demanding Crans Montana course turned out to be the right recipe.
There was more depth behind the HEAD charge, too. Switzerland’s Alessio Miggiano cracked the top ten in eighth, underscoring a strong day for the home nation. Inside the top 30 there was a proper roll-call of World Cup regulars flying the brand’s colours:
- Stefan Babinsky (Austria) – 15th
- Justin Murisier (Switzerland) – 16th
- Guglielmo Bosca (Italy) – 20th
- Simon Jocher (Germany) – 21st
Not a bad afternoon’s work for the Worldcup Rebels.
Worldcup Rebels shine in women’s Super-G
The weekend in Crans Montana wasn’t just about Franjo von Allmen and the men’s Downhill. On Saturday, the women’s Super-G offered its own showcase for the HEAD set-up, with two Austrians muscling their way into the top ten.
Ariane Rädler and Cornelia Hütter raced to seventh and eighth, putting a pair of Worldcup Rebels firmly in the mix on another challenging set. Behind them, the points tally kept ticking over nicely:
- Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (Norway) – 11th
- Laura Gauche (France) – 14th
- Tricia Mangan (USA) – 19th
- Nina Ortlieb (Austria) – 20th
- Corinne Suter (Switzerland) – 23rd
- Keely Cashman (USA) – 25th
It wasn’t a podium parade, but in Super-G – that awkward middle child between Downhill and Giant Slalom – a cluster of solid results often says as much about your material and mindset as a single big win.
A wild weekend and an Olympic springboard
Of course, this being alpine ski racing, the mountain reminded everyone who’s in charge. Friday’s Downhill in Crans Montana turned into a truncated thriller, with Lindsey Vonn among those to fall before the event was cancelled after just six starters. It was an uncomfortable flashback to just how quickly things can go wrong when gravity and ice decide to gang up.
By Sunday, though, the story had flipped. The snow held, the course ran, and Franjo von Allmen turned a hometown World Cup into a launchpad for the Olympic Games. With a fifth World Cup win in his pocket, a repaired confidence after Wengen and Kitzbühel, and a Crans Montana crowd still ringing in his ears, he heads towards Bormio and the biggest stage of all with exactly what every downhiller wants: speed, belief, and a run he’ll happily replay in his mind all the way to the start gate.
