He crossed the winter unrecognizable, dragging his spleen on the slopes, far from the successes collected a few months earlier. Winner in 2021 of the big crystal globe – which rewards the best skier in the general classification of the World Cup –, the Frenchman Alexis Pinturault ended the 2021-2022 season without any victory, a virgin exercise as he had never known. for more than ten years of presence at the highest level.
“Pintu” had finished this exercise exhausted, physically and psychologically, to the point of wondering about the follow-up to be given to his career. After publishing a book (From gold to crystalMarabout, 192 pages, 19.90 euros) as therapy to verbalize his past malaise – “I needed to close a chapter of my life and start over with a blank page” –, Alexis Pinturault has decided to put his skis back on, for four additional winters, or even more if you like.
Saturday, October 22, the skiers will launch, in Sölden, as every year, the new season of the World Cup. The Savoyard will be on the Austrian Rettenbach glacier the next day, at the start of the inaugural giant slalom.
“I can feel the excitement rising”, confides the Courchevel skier, in a Parisian café, on October 11. Accompanied by his wife, Romane, who manages his communication and his relations with partners, he appears relaxed, smiling, but also lucid about his dark year. Alexis Pinturault assures him: pleasure, one of his driving forces, with a good dose of determination and risk-taking, has returned.
“Things were blurry”
When taking stock of the 2021-2022 season, the French champion had quickly found the answers to the questions he was asking himself. “I understood that I always flourished in what I did. » He also questioned his coaches, to find out if he “wasn’t[t] not off the mark », if his sensations did not hide a prohibitive technical delay on the competition. His coaches reassured him.
The evil was elsewhere, quickly identified. After the 2021 world title, Alexis Pinturault did not take the time to rest. To the feeling of having achieved the fulfillment of his life as an athlete and to the natural relaxation that resulted from it were added the solicitations of the media and partners: France has been waiting for this moment since Luc Alphand, in 1997, that is an understatement. that they were many. “With the euphoria of the big globe, I didn’t take as much rest as necessary. My main mistake was projecting myself too quickly into the Olympic season, I attacked the season [2021-2022] tiredness “, analyzes Alexis Pinturault.
From the start of winter, the Savoyard felt that “something is wrong”, that he is not in rhythm. His fifth place in Sölden, a year ago, is a sham. He will never find during the winter – only three podiums – the qualities that made him the best all-round skier, he, the giantist at ease in slalom as in super-G. “I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do, what I felt like, he explains today with hindsight. Things were blurry, I felt like I was following a movement. » Without control…
His greatest disappointment was, without a doubt, not having been able to win a medal at the Beijing Olympics in February, he who had clung, race after race, to the hope that form would return to the tracks of Yanqing. Alas, his best result on the Chinese tracks was a fifth place, honorable however in view of his physical condition at the time. Alexis Pinturault will leave China in tears, against the shoulders of the coaches of the France team. “Everything I’ve been through, I never thought I would. I didn’t understand how this could happen to me, he remembers. It taught me to listen to my body more. »
The evil is deeper than when “fiasco”, as he describes in his book, he had known at the Saint-Moritz Worlds in 2017 (no medal), a season during which he had still signed four World Cup victories. His ” the Blues “ was then temporary.
“The big globe, a utopia”
To open a “new chapter” of his sporting life, the French skier reunited with an old acquaintance: Stéphane Quittet. The former manager of the technical group of the Blues (2007-2016) replaces the federal coach Xavier Munier within the personal cell of Alexis Pinturault. He will bring him his science of mental preparation, to which the Frenchman has only had recourse until then on an ad hoc basis.
At 31, the skier from Courchevel has no more time to lose. In February 2023, the resort of Courchevel, where the Pinturault family has owned several high-end hotels for three generations, is organizing the Alpine Skiing World Championships – the women’s events will take place in Méribel. A unique opportunity to shine at home.
And the man with 34 World Cup victories (an unequaled record in France) would give himself one last Olympic chance, in less than four years at the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina (Italy). A return to the Alps which is no stranger to Pinturault’s desire to extend until 2026, he who has only participated in the Olympics in places far from the cradle of skiing (Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing).
In the meantime, the Frenchman has not set himself any goals for the winter. “The big globe is a utopia. I am coming out of a difficult year, I have to rebuild myself. » Especially since the season, arithmetic of the World Cup calendar requires, seems promised to versatile speed specialist skiers rather than to technicians at ease in super-G. However, very quickly in the discussion, “Pintu” adds, with a small smile, that he would like to disturb the duel announced between the Swiss Marco Odermatt, winner of the general classification, and the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, his runner-up in 2022. The pride of the champion, no doubt. A sign, perhaps, that the desire has indeed returned.
Ski-cross: Megève and Deux-Alpes canceled due to lack of snow
Bad weather for the World Cups in France. The stage scheduled for Deux-Alpes on November 4 and 5, which was to launch the skicross season, has been canceled. The fault of “high altitude weather conditions [qui] do not allow us to consider the organization calmly”, advances with euphemism, in a press release, the Isère station, whose slopes are still virgin of snow on this eve of All Saints. For the same reasons, the snowboardcross events, scheduled for October 29 and 30 in Les Deux-Alpes, have been postponed to the first weekend of December.
Megève was also on the calendar for the Skicross World Cup, on January 28 and 29, 2023. But because of the lack of water due to the summer drought, the Haute-Savoie resort preferred to throw in the towel in September so as not to hypothecate snowmaking requirements for the winter season.