Raich, Benjamin

Benjamin Raich, (born February 28, 1978, Arzl im Pitztal, Austria), Austrian Alpine skier who won gold medals in both the slalom and the giant slalom (GS) at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Raich earned international acclaim at age 18 when he won the slalom at the 1996 junior world championships. He returned the next year to the junior world championships and took the gold in the GS. Raich earned his first World Cup points in 1998, finishing 10th in the GS event at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and 96th overall. The next season he gained his first spot on a World Cup podium with a third-place finish in the slalom at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, and he broke into the top 10 overall despite competing in only one downhill race.

At the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, Raich earned his first Olympic medal, a bronze, in the men’s combined event. In a controversial ruling, he also was awarded the bronze in the slalom after Great Britain’s Alain Baxter failed a drug test and forfeited his medal. Raich rose steadily in the rankings over the next three years. At the 2005 Alpine world championships in Bormio, Italy, he took first place in the combined and the slalom, second place in the GS, and third in the super G and the downhill. He amassed 1,454 points in the 2004–05 World Cup standings and won the slalom, GS, and combined titles, but he was edged out of the overall title by American Bode Miller.

During the 2005–06 season leading up to the Olympics, Raich stood on the podium 10 times and even won the overall World Cup title, but his debut in Turin on February 14, 2006, proved disappointing. After leading the combined event, he skied out of bounds and was disqualified, clearing the way for American Ted Ligety to win the gold medal. Four days later Raich finished the super G in 21st place, more than a full second off the pace, but he came back to win his first Olympic gold medal, in the GS on February 20. Three days before his 28th birthday, Raich collected his second gold, in the slalom. The Austrian men’s Alpine ski team collected a total of eight medals at the Games, but Raich provided the team’s only golds.

Less than a month after Turin, Raich won his 7th gold (and 12th medal) on the 2005–06 World Cup circuit and captured his first overall World Cup title with a total of 1,410 points. He also won the World Cup season’s combined and GS championships. At the 2007 Alpine world championships in Åre, Sweden, Raich earned a bronze medal in the super combined (one run of downhill and one of slalom on the same day).

In 2010 Raich failed to medal at the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, with a fourth-place finish in the slalom his best result, though he did manage to capture a combined World Cup championship that year. He won just a single World Cup race (a super-G event in February 2012) between that season and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where he finished in seventh place in the giant slalom and did not complete the slalom competition. Raich retired from competitive skiing in 2015.