Alpine skiing: Frenchwoman Tessa Worley, double world champion in giant slalom, ends her career at 33

The end clap. The French Ski Federation announced on Sunday March 19 that Tessa Worley was ending her career at the end of this season. The French skier ends her incredible story with an 11th place on the giant slalom of Soldeu (Andorra), at the end of a mixed winter, during which the Bornandine did not manage to climb on the podium. Tessa Worley, winner of the small crystal globe last winter in the discipline, saw the untouchable Mikaela Shiffrin succeed her. The American notched her 88th World Cup success in Sunday’s giant.

For more than 15 years of a long and rich career, Tessa Worley carried the French women’s ski team on her shoulders. She won two world championship titles in giant slalom (2013 and 2017). The French also has two small globes of the discipline (2017 and 2022) in her trophy cabinet. In the World Cup, she went up to thirty-six times on the podium, sixteen times on the top step.

“I leave serene, happy, very proud of all these yearsshe said at the microphone of Eurosport. Sport has given me so much. I have had many beautiful moments. The giant’s second small globe, won in front of the Méribel public, was incredible! These are the moments that remain etched in my sports memory. (…) I think I’m going to miss skiing, I can’t really realize. In a few months, I think I will realize. I will miss some things, but I am serene and happy. I want to live something else, but I remain a passionate skier.” The French women’s technical team (slalom and giant slalom) will enter a new era next winter, with the retirements of Tessa Worley, Nastasia Noens and Coralie Frasse Sombet.

A precocious talent

She was not yet 20 years old. It is on the American snow of Aspen, on November 29, 2008, that the young skier will write the first lines of her story. Sixth after the first round, the Haut-Savoyarde signs a second supersonic passage and knocks out the competition. At the top of the discipline at 19, Tessa Worley thus succeeds Ingrid Jacquemod, until then the last Frenchwoman to have won the World Cup (2005). A promising success, which the Frenchwoman will have maintained during her 17 years on the World Cup circuit.