Didier Défago

Didier Défago, born 2 October 1977 in Morgins in Valais, is a retired Swiss World Cup alpine ski racer. He made his World Cup debut at eighteen in March 1996 and was Swiss national champion in downhill in 2003 and in giant slalom in 2004. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler he won the downhill to become Olympic champion. In 2009 he won the Wengen and Kitzbühel downhill classics in consecutive weeks, and in 2005 he finished sixth overall and fourth in super-G. A knee injury during glacier training above Zermatt in September 2010 ended his 2011 season, and he retired in March 2015 after five World Cup wins and sixteen podiums.