Janica Kostelic
Jean-Claude Killy
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Janica Kostelic leads 5 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Janica Kostelic at #9 and Jean-Claude Killy at #12.
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The case for Janica Kostelic
The greatest championship racer in alpine history, from a country with no ski culture, no federation money and almost no mountains suitable for World Cup racing. Kostelic trained across Europe out of a family car with her father as coach, and at Salt Lake City in 2002 won giant slalom, combined and slalom golds plus super-G silver — four medals at one Games, the most any alpine skier has taken, and a haul no woman has matched. She defended the combined title at Turin in 2006 for a fourth Olympic gold, level with Kjetil Andre Aamodt at the top of the sport's all-time list. She won three overall Crystal Globes and 30 World Cup races, and a hat-trick of golds at the 2003 world championships in St. Moritz. She retired at 25 after nine knee operations and a thyroid condition, having won everything available on a body that had effectively been rebuilt twice.
The case for Jean-Claude Killy
The shortest great career on this list and one of the most concentrated. Killy won the first two World Cup overall titles in 1967 and 1968, taking 12 of 16 races in the inaugural season — a proportion of a calendar no racer has since approached — and then swept downhill, giant slalom and slalom at the Grenoble Olympics in 1968, matching Toni Sailer as the only men to win all three at one Games. He finished with 18 World Cup victories in a circuit that barely existed yet, plus the world combined titles of 1966 and 1968. He retired at 24 and became the sport's first modern commercial star, later co-presiding over the 1992 Albertville Games and sitting on the IOC. His ranking here reflects an obvious limitation of era rather than of talent: there simply was no long circuit for him to dominate.