A third-place finish in the giant slalom World Cup final in Andorran Soldeu was enough for Odermatt to pass Austrian Maier, who recorded 2,000 World Cup points in the 1999–2000 season.
But the Swiss settled for nothing more than a first-place finish on Saturday, thus securing the 13th win of the winter. And it came in superior style.
Double World Cup gold medals
He was clearly fastest in the first run, second fastest in the second, and won a full 2.11 seconds ahead of runner-up Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway. Marco Schwarz, Austria, was third.
The World Cup final ends with Sunday's slalom, but Odermatt is not there. The final score of the season therefore stayed at a record-breaking 2,042 points.
"I've always said that the milestone of 2,000 points is not important to me. But then I've felt more and more nervous every day. So it seemed to be in the back of my head. I probably really wanted to succeed, so I took risks and gave it my all," he said, according to the Luzerner Zeitung.
Odermatt has been in a class of his own most notably in giant slalom, Saturday's discipline, and super-G, where he won as recently as Thursday.
Maze best
In addition to a fantastic World Cup season, Marco Odermatt picked up two golds from the World Cup last month, in giant slalom and downhill.
Only three men have won 13 events in a single World Cup season: Ingemar Stenmark (1979), Hermann Maier (2001) and Marcel Hirscher (2018). Best of all, however, is Mikaela Shiffrin, the American who won a whopping 17 races in the 2018–19 season.
Shiffrin is also one of two women's skaters to slap the men's fingers in terms of overall points in a season. Shiffrin scored 2,204 points in the aforementioned season, but is still only second on the list behind Tina Maze of Slovenia, who amassed 2,414 points in 2012–2013.