Ski: Alexis Pinturault continues to write his story

The sporting hero of the weekend is called Alexis Pinturault.

The French skier won both giant slaloms in Adelboden, Switzerland.

For Virginie Phulpin, this is a turning point.

That's it, France finally realizes that it has a champion of the caliber of Jean-Claude Killy and Luc Alphand.

We are no longer close to a paradox.

It is when the ski resorts are languishing in the crisis that we finally open our eyes to one of the greatest champions of French skiing.

Not that Alexis Pinturault has just landed.

He's been dragging his spatulas on the world circuit for 10 years, and he's racked up victories.

Combined world champion, quadruple holder of the small crystal globe for this combined, three Olympic medals.

33 World Cup victories.

This weekend he simply overtook the legends Alberto Tomba and Bode Miller.

But as he is slightly less expansive than the Italian and the American, Alexis Pinturault does not build his story on flashes of brilliance, but little by little.

It enters people's hearts with a slowness inversely proportional to its speed on skis.

But this weekend everything has changed.

Finally, he remained the same.

He did what he can do best.

Go faster than its competitors.

And he flew over the two Giants organized in Giant's Mecca.

This is the nickname of Adelboden.

We always need grandiloquence to establish champions on Olympus.

In addition, he will probably remain the only one to win two days in a row in the Swiss resort.

It is because of a schedule disrupted by the health crisis that Adelboden has doubled the stake.

If at least these circumstances make us finally appreciate Alexis Pinturault at its true value, it is always that taken.  

Alexis Pinturault is one of those athletes who have been under pressure from the start of their career 

He is one of those to whom we stick labels of new Zidane, new Noah or new Killy.

And how heavy is it to carry!

Alexis Pinturault made me think of Richard Gasquet for a long time.

We expected everything, too soon, too quickly from these champions.

There is one who had Nadal and Federer on his way, and the other a certain Marcel Hirscher.

And the French tended to be disappointed with Alexis Pinturault's performance.

Frankly, winning so much when you have the Austrian ogre on his snowy road is a top flight.

The problem is perhaps also that on TV, we do not manage to realize what skiers are doing.

We do not see the difference in level of the slope, nor the speed of the competitors, nor the curves of their race.

It doesn't help popularize a champion like Alexis Pinturault.

But today he is at the head of the Alpine Skiing World Cup.

He can hope to win the big crystal globe, that is to say the general classification of the world cup.

The last French to do so was Luc Alphand in 1997. What if Alexis Pinturault was the new Alphand?

No, he is himself and we finally understood that he was in the big leagues.