The Norwegian Lucas Braathen caused a surprise one day before the start of the Alpine World Cup and announced his immediate resignation.
The 23-year-old Braathen, one of the scene’s most colorful figures, announced his immediate withdrawal at a press conference in Sölden. The trigger is a dispute with the Norwegian association over personal and marketing rights.
“Happy” for the first time
At the end of September, Braathen advertised for a Swedish clothing brand that is not one of the Norwegians’ official suppliers. Braathen emphasized that the association had it “treated disrespectfully”now it is for the first time in half a year “happy”.
He has himself “Almost always choosing to do what makes me happiest. That’s what’s important to me.” He’s not interested in lucrative sponsorship contracts or “that I was the best in the world after my last race”.
Five wins last season
Braathen won five World Cup races in giant slalom and slalom and the overall ranking in slalom last winter. In his 20-minute monologue, Braathen emphasized, sometimes with tears in his eyes, that he had always sworn to himself that he would only do sports “Keep going until the day it doesn’t make me so happy anymore”. Now he feels “free for the first time in years”.
Braathen is not the first Norwegian ski athlete to have a dispute with his own association. The Skiforbundet forces all members of its teams to only use the outfitters specified by them. All the big stars like Johannes Kläbo, Petter Northug (both cross-country skiing) and Henrik Kristoffersen (alpine skiing) have had heated arguments with the association because of this.
Braathen speaks of a “media campaign”
However, the public and the media are on the side of the officials in this dispute. Braathen therefore criticized that he “a media campaign against me for several months” had been exposed, “in which it was claimed that I was selfish, did not think about the community and was greedy”.
Most recently, the Braathen association had imposed a fine for his offense. However, he had not paid this until Thursday. The big bang followed on Friday.