The Women’s Downhill race of the Critérium de la Première Neige will be held on 16th December 2023 in the Oreiller-Killy (the OK) course at La Daille.
Mikaela Shiffrin won the first Downhill of the Season in St. Moritz. The US skier finished ahead of the Italian duo Sofia Goggia (+0.15) and Federica Brignone (+(0.17). Shiffrin has stood on the Downhill Alpine Ski World Cup podium seven times. Shiffrin's three previous wins in Downhill World Cup events came in Lake Louise (December 2, 2017), Bansko (January 24, 2020) and Courchevel (March 16, 2022).
The 28-year-old American ski Ace achieved in St. Moritz her 91 victory in the World Cup. She was on the podium 144 times in 258 Alpine Ski World Cup starts.
Sofia Goggia claimed the 2022-2023 Downhill Crystal Globe. She also won the discipline Globe in 2017-2018, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022. She is the first woman to win the Downhill Globe in three successive seasons since Lindsey Vonn won six in a row between 2007-2008 and 2012-2013. Goggia joins the five women group to have won the Donhill Globe at least four times: Lindsey Vonn (8), Annemarie Moser-Pröll (7), Renate Götschl (5), Michela Figini (4) and Katja Seizinger (4).
The 30-year-old Italian speed Queen won five of the nine women's Downhill World Cup races last season (Lake Louise I and II, St. Moritz, Cortina d'Ampezzo, and Crans Montana). She was the first woman to win at least five in a single season since Lindsey Vonn achieved that in 2015-2016. Goggia was on the podium eight times, five wins and three second places. The only time she did not finish in the Top-3 was in the second Downhill held in Cortina d'Ampezzo where she did not finish the race (DNF).
With 17 wins in the Downhill, Sofia Goggia is the active skier with the most victories in the Downhill in the Alpine Ski World Cup. In Women's World Cup Downhill events, only Lindsey Vonn (43), Annemarie Moser-Pröll (36), Renate Götschl (24), and Michela Figini (17) have celebrated as many victories as Goggia.
Sofia Goggia finished in second place in the first Downhill of the season in St. Moritz.
Federica Brignone finished in third place in St. Moritz. The 33-year-old Italian Skier has finished on the Downhill podium in the alpine Ski World Cup six times but she never won a race in this discipline.
Brignone celebrated her 23rd World Cup victory in Tremblant, Canada. She finished in the podium 60 times, 23 wins, in the World Cup.
Slovenian Ilka Stuhec won the last Downhill of the season at the Finals in Soldeu, her fourth podium of the season, and finished in second place in the Downhill standings. Stuhec confirmed in Andorra her come back at the very top of women’s Alpine Downhill skiing. The 33-year-old and double Downhill World Champion at St. Moritz 2017 and Are 2019, become the oldest winner in a women's World Cup Downhill race since Lindsey Vonn won in Åre on 14 March 2018 at age 33.
Ilka Å tuhec (Cortina d'Ampezzo, and Soldeu) and Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (Kvitfjell) are the only non-Italian women to win a Downhill event last season.
Kajsa Vickhof Lie became the first Norwegian woman to win a Downhill Alpine Ski World Cup when she won in Kvitfjell on 4 March. She had finished second in Cortina d'Ampezzo on 21 January.
Vickhof Lie can join the group of four other Norwegian women who have won multiple World Cup events: Andrine Flemmen (3), Ragnhild Mowinckel (3), Trine Rognmo-Bakke (2) and Nina Haver-Løseth (2).
Corinne Suter finished in third place in the Downhill standings. The Swiss Downhill Olympic Champion has won 5 races in the Alpine Ski World Cup (3 in Downhill, 2 n Super-G) and finished in the podium 24 times.
Suter took bronze in the Women's Downhill at the 47th Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel-Méribel.
In the 2019-2020 season the 29-year-old skier won the Downhill and the Super-G Crystal Globes. In the next two seasons she finished in second place (2020-2021 and 2021-2022) in the Downhill standings.
Jasmine Flury won the women's downhill world title in Méribel on February 11. It was only her second victory in a major competition, following a victory at the Women's Super-G World Cup in St. Moritz in December 2017. Flury's only podium in the Downhill was a second place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in January 2022.
Lara Gut-Behrami has been participating in the Alpine Skiing World Cup for 16 years and has won 12 women's World Cup Downhills, the last one in Zauchensee in January 2022, for a total of 20 podiums in the discipline. She achieved in Soldeu at the Finals her only podium finish in the Downhill last season. In October Gut-Behrami won the Alpine Ski World Cup Opener in Sölden. She became the third woman to claim at least one World Cup win in 13 different seasons, after Renate Götschl (14) and Lindsey Vonn (13).
Austria's women has missed the podium in St. Moritz with Cornelia Hütter (+0.28), who was second in the Super-G the day before, and Mirjam Puchner (+0.39) taking fourth and fifth place.
Hütter finished on the Downhill podium in Val d'Isère two times (2013, and 2016).
Puchner was on the podium five times in the Alpine Ski World Cup. In 2021 she made it onto the podium in Val d'Isère for the third time in the season. She finished third 0.91 seconds behind Goggia.