Alpine Skiing
Marcel Hirscher’s incredible career in numbers
As he announces his retirement from racing, check out these fascinating facts from Austrian serial alpine skiing champion Marcel Hirscher's stunning career.
How long did it take Marcel Hirscher to write the most breath-taking chapter in skiing history? ? A grand total of seven hours, 17 minutes, 50 seconds and 40 hundredths of a second.
The Austrian great competed in 245 World Cup races and stood on the podium 138 times – 67 times as the winner. He became overall World Cup winner eight times in a row and added 12 smaller crystal globes to the eight big ones. He also won two Olympic golds and one silver, and took seven gold and four silver medals at the World Championships.
To do all this he trained on snow for 1,000 days, had 2,000 pairs of racing skis and 150 pairs of ski boots. His service crew toiled 1,365 days and nights to ensure he had the fastest skis and the best grip. As his incomparable career comes to an end, we present the most fascinating facts about Marcel Hirscher.
The power of eight: Serial hero of the ski world
Everyone knows it, but it’s hard to grasp exactly what it means. Serial hero Marcel Hirscher was the best in the world for eight consecutive years, basically having a lock on the overall World Cup. Marc Girardelli, the next best in the all-time ranking of ski superstars, needed nine winters to win five crystal globes. And back then, that was regarded as a pretty crazy achievement.
Green number one: Fastest in the valley, 105 times
Hirscher has seen the magical green number one at the finishing line 105 times in his career (not counting parallel races). He achieved the best time in the first round 61 times, 44 times in the second round and in 15 races he doubled up to post two times which couldn’t be beaten.
Marcel Hirscher
© Andreas Schaad/Red Bull Content Pool
Heavy metal: 14 medals in 24 events
A tiny percentage of people get to participate in an Olympic Games or World Championships; an even smaller percentage win medals there. Hirscher started at three Olympic Games and five Ski World Championships in a total of 24 events. He ended up with plenty of heavy metal, 14 in total – nine gold, five silver and his seven titles make him the most successful World Championships participant of all time.
Fine margins among the elite: 51.16 seconds
There are fine margins between victory and defeat in ski racing. The cumulative gap between Hirscher and his runners-up was a total of 51.16 seconds. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the difference between being named the best skier of all time and the rest of the world. A lead of 2.19 seconds was enough for five individual World Championship titles, while 1.5 seconds gave him the title of double Olympic champion. Historically, the biggest blow to the competition came in his 30th victory when he won by 3.28 seconds at the Giant Slalom in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2015! Two consecutive slaloms were a lot closer. In Madonna di Campiglio in December 2017 he won by four hundredths of a second, in Zagreb two weeks later by 0.05 seconds.
Marcel Hirscher in Lenzerheide
© Alexis Boichard/Agence-Zoom
Never missing the finish line: A profitable winter
Accidents are common in the technical disciplines, but in his last three winters he didn't miss a single World Cup race, and crossed the finish line in all 67 races. His winters have been very profitable; in these three years he also won overall, giant slalom and slalom crystal balls.
Every fourth race win with lucky five
Hirscher went off first in 12 of his 67 World Cup victories, but he had even more success with the starting number five, winning 17 times – an average of every fourth race win with that lucky number.
Hirscher in Kitzbühel
© Samo Vidic/Red Bull Content Pool
Nine winning locations
If you win a lot, you get to celebrate success in a lot of places and Hirscher is the record-breaking podium guest in nine destinations on the alpine ski circuit. In Adelboden alone he hit the legendary winning cowbell nine times, eight times in Alta Badia, seven times in Val d’Isère, six times in Kranjska Gora, five times in Zagreb and four times in Beaver Creek.
Unbelievable statistics: On average, better than second
In winter 2015-16, Hirscher collected his most World Cup points, with a total of 1,795. Out of his eight overall World Cup victories, his highest points average per race came in 2017-18 with 81. His average performance was better than second. And in the calendar year of 2018, he celebrated more World Cup victories than any skier before him, with 14.
Marcel Hirscher
© GEPA pictures/Wolfgang Grebien
The golden day in February
Hirscher won three of his seven World Championship gold medals on February 17 – including an historic home triumph in Schladming in 2013.
Practice makes perfect: 1,000 days of training
Hirscher’s entire accumulated time racing was seven hours, 17 minutes, 50 seconds and 40 hundredths of a second but he trained with his coach Mike Pircher 100 days a year on snow. That adds up to 1,000 days training – his daily fitness regime not included.
2,000 pairs of skis
Hirscher was the king of equipment. In his eight years as overall World Cup winner he and his outfitter Atomic kept the equipment list in order – and it wasn't a small list! He started each season with around 100 pairs of skis – 40 each for slalom and giant slalom, 20 pairs for speed – and including extras built during the season around 2,000 pairs carried the initials MH. Each pair were produced for him, tested by experts and then subjected to six hours of preparation, taking his Atomic crew some 500 days. And in the end he didn’t actually use all of them.
Three years, 270 days waxing, filing and brushing
Hirscher had a set of eight pairs of skis ready for use at every race, ready for all weather, snow and piste conditions. That added up to a lot of manual work for his support staff, with every high-end tuning taking up to two hours per pair of skis. For 269 races (World Cup, World Championships, Olympics) and 1,000 training days, Hirscher's service crews spent a total of 846 days and nights just waxing, filing and brushing in the ski cellar. Then there were the three hours of boot fitting for each of his 15 pairs of ski boots per season. If you add the 865 days for ski tuning and boot fittings to the 500 days of basic ski preparation, then of the 4,554 days between his first World Cup race and his retirement, a total of 1,365 were spent tuning the material. That’s three years and 270 days, around the clock, to get the best grip and the fastest turns.
0.00: The perfect final score
When the FIS point system was reformed 27 years ago, no one expected someone like Hirscher to come along. While in the World Cup more points are better, in the FIS points list, it’s the other way around. Curiously, Hirscher has exactly 0.00 points, something no other athlete has achieved at career end. The premium rule increases a skier’s final points score by 50 percent when they're not on the grid, but that won’t apply for Hirscher in year one – given that 50 percent of zero is still zero.