One of the emerging stars of alpine skiing is Switzerland’s Loic Meillard. Still in his early twenties, Meillard has represented his country at the Winter Olympics, participated in every Alpine Ski World Cup since 2015 (the same year he became a full-time professional) and won two Junior World Championships. In 2020, after several second and third-place finishes, he won his first World Cup race, in the Parallel-G discipline.

Meillard was born in the Swiss town of Neuchatel in 1996 and has been an avid skier since he was two years old. As he grew up, the less he wanted to ski for fun and the more he wanted to ski competitively. When he was 12, his family moved 175km to Heremence so that Meillard and his sister Melanie, also a highly-rated alpine skier, could practice at the Heremencia ski club. The family’s dedication to skiing paid off in 2015 when Meillard stormed the Junior World Championships in Norway, taking gold in the combined, silver in the giant slalom, and bronze in the super-G. At the next event in Sweden in 2017, he successfully defended his combined gold.

The Alpine Ski World Cup is, for many skiers, the most important event in world skiing, more so than the Olympics. It’s not an event one can instantly climb to the top of, no matter how good they are. Every year, Meillard’s overall placing has improved and in 2020, he finished in the top ten for the first time. When one looks at Loic Meillard, they are looking at a future World Cup winner.