From the first seconds on the phone, the 77-year-old ex-skier makes it clear that she has lost none of her legendary banter, which she walks around during a rich and disjointed interview, between memories and news.

With eleven world medals, Marielle Goitschel shares the post-war women's record with Sweden's Anja Pärson and American star Mikaela Shiffrin, close to becoming the most successful skier in the World Cup.

"We have to stop saying the record, the greatest of all time, it's zero. To compare you need the same plan", asserts Goitschel from her home in Anglet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), proud to be the Frenchwoman with the most medals at the Worlds (men and women combined) with seven titles between 1962 and 1968.

Marielle Goitschel during the slalom of the 1964 Olympic Games in Innsbruck on February 1, 1964 © STAFF / AFP / Archives

"The ones I like are the best. I love Petra Vlhova, I like Mikaela Shiffrin, she's the only one who comes close to my number of medals. I like the Italian team with Sofia Goggia, a + little stopper + , she's not tall, but she has a unique way of using the terrain, she sweats skiing".

"They are fighters, girls who do not accept the idea of ​​losing," she notes.

"Sometimes I hear things, + oh the beautiful 10th place +, but no! Those who say that will never succeed. When I was second, I was mortified, unless it was behind my sister Christine".

"I was beating the boys"

On the France team - "I do not know the composition of the women's team apart from Romane Miradoli and Tessa Worley" - Goitschel dubs the Olympic slalom champion Clément Noël.

"He comes from the Vosges, like my mother, and from the Val d'Isère ski club, like Killy and us the Goitschels. His style is marvellous. It's the most beautiful + ski touch +, but you have to that he solves his head problems, he said it, how is it that he goes out so much?

Always attentive to the news of her sport, however, she only watches the major competitions live, broadcast on free channels, like her new passion: "I'm going to surprise you, I watch biathlon. I know everything by heart, Jacquelin , Simon, the wonderful little Jeanmonnot. I'm a complete fan".

French skier Marielle Goitschel walks through a gate during the women's slalom at the Winter Olympics in Chamrousse, near Grenoble, on February 13, 1968 © STAFF / AFP / Archives

Back in the Alps, she says that "today's skiing, I tell myself that it's made for me. In super-G (created after his career, editor's note) I would not have left a single medal! And in slalom, so there, untouchable. Shiffrin, I'd put her in the wind with my fingers in my nose".

In sixty years, things have indeed changed, for her who knew the wooden stakes.

"I touched them all. I damaged myself terribly, which earned me operations on both shoulders, elbows and knees. We were not protected, we ran in ski pants and sweaters. We put on sanitary napkins on my arms for the blows I gave to the poles, which cost me terrible necrosis. There were very few of us to ski like the boys. Besides, I would point out to you that at the time in training in slalom, I beat the boys".

"Crazy"

Title winner at the Olympic Games in 1964 in Innsbruck (giant) and in 1968 in Grenoble (slalom), Goitschel belongs to the golden generation of French skiing with her sister Christine, Jean-Claude Killy, Guy Périllat, Annie Famose and Isabelle Mir, stars of their time.

"The French football team sucked, we had the Grenoble Olympics, we won all the time, we had raided the Portillo Worlds (Chile, 1966) in the middle of August, people were reading us in L'Equipe on the beach, skiing had become the favorite sport of the French, it was incredible. While these Worlds-2023 nobody seems to be aware", she regrets.

French skiers Christine and Marielle Goitschel, Annie Famose, Georges Mauduit, Madeleine Bochatay and Jean-Claude Killy arrive by sled on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris, May 22, 1964 © - / AFP/Archives

Between a trip aboard his MGB with Claude François ("he was a complete fan of the Goitschel sisters"), his political commitment to Charles de Gaulle and a meeting with Audrey Hepburn, this "cheeky" young woman fought against "injustice “to obtain in particular bonuses equivalent to those of men.

With her former teammates, whom she has remained close to, Marielle Goitschel is invited to the Worlds and should go to the start of the female giant.

A photo opportunity with Mikaela Shiffrin?

© 2023 AFP