Dominik Paris carries Italian downhill hopes but Marco Odermatt starts favourite

Fifty years after Franz Klammer launched his swashbuckling assault on the Patscherkofel slope above Innsbruck to claim the most enduring of men’s downhill gold medals, the traditional ‘blue riband’ event of the Winter Olympics is holding out for a new hero.

Whilst Lindsay Vonn’s ligament-defying exploits continue to stretch the column inches, few of the men’s top names find their achievements straying far beyond the traditional alpine nations where they are feted as heroes.

Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt starts as the strong favourite on the awe-inspiring Stelvio above Bormio on Saturday, but a local hero who has already tamed the course seven times on the World Cup circuit is dreaming of giving his career a fairy tale finish.

“It’s a fight between the slope and you. Who is stronger?,” said 36-year-old Dominik Paris after training on Thursday. Paris, who ranks second alongside Peter Muller for all-time World Cup men’s downhill wins, is the man in whom the Italians are investing their hopes.

Odermatt, however, has other ideas. A four-time consecutive overall world champion, he has surpassed Pirmin Zurbriggen as the most successful Swiss skier in history. He won giant-slalom gold in Beijing in 2022, extending the Federer-like fame he enjoys in his home country.

Yet Odermatt has struggled to transcend his sport in the same way as Klammer, a 22-year-old farm boy who blazed to victory in front of 60,000 locals and Italy’s Bernhard Russi, the soon-to-be-deposed leader. As Klammer descended, Russi recalled, “the whole mountain started to shake”.

Nor is it the rags-to-riches tale of Bill Johnson, a one-time car thief who came from nowhere to steal gold in 1984.

“I don’t even know why everyone else is here,” Johnson had bragged to an Austrian TV crew after his first training run. “Everyone else can fight for second.” He proved as good as his word, eclipsing the great Muller by over a quarter of a second.

Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal won gold in 2018, two years after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in a crash. Coincidentally, Svindal is in Bormio as coach of US superstar Vonn, whose exploits continue to attract the majority of the alpine attention.

Italy’s men’s skiers have long lived in the shadow of Alberto Tomba, the slalom and giant-slalom specialist nicknamed ‘La Bomba’, who used to boast about his pre-race exploits between the sheets, and once declared himself ‘The Messiah of Skiing’.

The host nation, whose only previous men’s downhill gold was won by Zeno Colo in 1952, craves a new king to deny Odermatt. If not Paris, it could be the rapidly emerging Giovanni Franzoni, who edged Odermatt for his first World Cup downhill win in Kitzbuhel late last month.

“My goal has been reached and I have gone beyond my expectations. It’s just crazy,” said Franzoni, a 24-year-old from Brescia who began this season aspiring simply to make the World Cup’s top 30 start-list and qualify for the Games.

If Paris or Franzoni can channel the ebullient spirit of Klammer half a century on, the Olympic men’s downhill will have a new story to tell – and it might even shift some international column inches away from the Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin show.