Ingemar Stenmark
Alberto Tomba
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ingemar Stenmark leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ingemar Stenmark at #2 and Alberto Tomba at #8.
The case for Ingemar Stenmark
For 34 years the answer to the question of who had won most, and still the men's record-holder. The Swede took 86 World Cup victories — 46 in giant slalom, 40 in slalom — without ever seriously contesting a downhill, which meant he was surrendering an entire half of the points table and winning the overall title anyway, three years running from 1976 to 1978. In 1978-79 he won 13 races in a season. At Lake Placid in 1980 he won both technical golds, coming from well behind in the first run each time, and he added world titles in 1978 and a slalom-giant slalom double at Schladming in 1982. His style was the argument for economy: minimal upper-body movement, no visible effort, a line so precise that his runs look slow on film until the split times appear. He was also the last great champion of the straight ski, retiring in 1989 four years before the shaped ski arrived.
The case for Alberto Tomba
Tomba la Bomba took a sport followed by Alpine villages and made it a national event in Italy. He won 50 World Cup races — 35 slaloms and 15 giant slaloms — and three Olympic golds, taking both technical events at Calgary in 1988 and defending the giant slalom at Albertville in 1992, which made him the first alpine skier to win the same event at two Games. He medalled at three consecutive Olympics. His overall Crystal Globe came late, in 1995, and he closed with a slalom and giant slalom double at the 1996 world championships in Sierra Nevada. The numbers understate him: Tomba raced with a physical, aggressive line built on unusual leg strength, and he turned second runs into theatre, routinely coming from four or five places back. Italian television audiences for his slaloms reached levels the sport has never seen since.