Marcel Hirscher is Back on Snow
8th September 2025
Last modified on September 11th, 2025
The Austrian great is hoping to race this winter for the Netherlands, his mother’s home country. He tore his ACL in training last winter as he mounted a comeback.
Hirscher, now 36 years old, made his most recent turns at an indoor ski area in the Netherlands, testing to see how his repaired knee would perform.
Hirscher’s 67 World Cup wins put him second on the all-time men’s list behind only Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 victories.
He has won two Olympic golds, in combined and giant slalom at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, plus a silver in slalom at the 2014 Sochi Games.
The eight-time overall World Cup skiing champion first retired from racing in 2019 but announced last season that he would begin competing again.
He entered three races in 2024 and finished one, where he came 23rd.
Then, the comeback was cut short when Hirscher fell during training and tore his ACL.
Following his return to snow at the indoor skiing facility in Zoetermeer, he said the experience left him with what he called three key learnings:
“First: the knee shows no negative reaction which is really great. Second: the joy of skiing remains. Third: the road back to race mode is still long.”
Hirscher recalled that the weeks and days leading up to his ski day were nerve-racking.
“Like before a school exam or the last day of vacation,” he said, according to the FIS.
With the trial run out of the way, though, Hirscher’s now thinking ahead.
“The big question for the future will be: how much risk am I still willing to take, and can I still perform at that level?” he said, in a nod to the high-performance ski racing he did before his injury.
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Hirscher plans to ski more, but is unsure when or where that will happen.
He said he and his team are monitoring conditions and planning his next moves.
“In this phase of the comeback, not only snow but also visibility is crucial. We’ll make the call at short notice, depending on the conditions,” Hirscher said.
“I can’t say for sure when I’ll finally be back at the start of a World Cup race. But if it’s up to me, then sooner rather than later,” he said at the time.
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The World Cup alpine racing season begins on October 25 in Sölden, Austria, with two giant slalom races.
The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics begin in February 2026.
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