Key Points
A Brazilian just won the World Cup season title in alpine skiing — a sentence that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Lucas Pinheiro Braathen crossed the finish line at Hafjell, Norway, on Tuesday with a time of 2:20.65, clinching the giant slalom Crystal Globe and making Brazil skiing history in the sport’s most prestigious competition, The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports.
Brazil Skiing History Made on Home Snow
The victory came with drama. Swiss superstar Marco Odermatt, who led the giant slalom standings entering the final race, crashed out on his first run, blowing a door wide open that Braathen charged through. The Brazilian topped the first run and held his nerve in the second to finish 0.58 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Loïc Meillard, with childhood friend Atle Lie McGrath of Norway in third.
The setting was deeply personal. Braathen grew up racing on the slopes at Hafjell, near Lillehammer, before his life took a detour through football pitches in Campinas, São Paulo, and back again. Speaking four languages fluently — Norwegian, Portuguese, English, and German — the 25-year-old has become one of the most distinctive personalities in winter sports.
From Retirement to Olympic Gold to Crystal Globe
Braathen’s journey to this moment defies convention. Born in Oslo in 2000 to a Norwegian father and a Brazilian mother, he first discovered sport playing football with his uncles in São Paulo. He switched to skiing at nine, rose through Norwegian racing, and won the slalom Crystal Globe for Norway in 2023 — then stunned the sport by retiring at 23, one day before the new World Cup season began.
He returned a year later representing Brazil instead of Norway. Critics questioned whether the switch was a marketing stunt. Braathen answered on the slopes: five podiums in his first season back, then Olympic gold in the giant slalom at Milano Cortina in February 2026 — the first Winter Olympics medal ever won by Brazil or any South American country — and now a season championship.
His Olympic celebration — a samba dance on the podium with “Vamos Dançar” painted on his helmet — went viral across Brazil. President Lula wrote on social media that the result showed “Brazilian sport has no limits.” The Crystal Globe adds a sustained-excellence dimension to what the Olympic gold began.
A Second Globe Within Reach
Wednesday brings the slalom finale, where Braathen trails McGrath by 41 points. A victory worth 100 points would give him a realistic shot at a second Crystal Globe in the same week, a feat that would cement one of the most remarkable individual seasons in Brazil skiing history and in the sport’s modern era.
Odermatt’s crash sealed his fate in the giant slalom but the Swiss star had already wrapped up the overall World Cup title along with the downhill and super-G globes. His fatigue on the softer spring snow at Hafjell gave Braathen the opening he needed.
For a country of 200 million people where ski racing has never registered as a mainstream sport, Braathen has become something rare: a one-man winter sports movement. He celebrated his Olympic gold with a samba on the podium and has spoken repeatedly about wanting skiing broadcast on Copacabana Beach. On Tuesday in Lillehammer, he took one more step toward making that vision real.