With Lena Dürr and Emma Aicher, the DSV currently has two slalom aces up its sleeve. Their paths to the top of the world were completely different.
The grooves in the piste were deep and the flat light made the race difficult – but Lena Dürr carved calmly around the slalom poles in Copper Mountain. Where other athletes had great difficulties and made mistakes in the second round on Sunday (November 30th, 2025), Dürr stayed on track and climbed from ninth place to the podium.
The day before, the Bavarian had already celebrated a great success with sixth place in the giant slalom – it was her best result in the discipline. With a historic weekend, the 34-year-old sets another exclamation mark for the small DSV technical team.
Dürr and her much younger teammate Emma Aicher, who came third in the first slalom of the season in Levi – her first podium in the discipline – are currently shaking up the slalom world leaders. Their paths could hardly have been more different:
When Lena Dürr drove her first World Cup race in 2008, Emma Aicher was just four years old, still living in Sweden and skiing over the hill behind her mother’s house. 17 years later, Dürr and Aicher meet at the top of the world in slalom.
Two paths, one goal
While Dürr focused early on her flagship discipline, slalom, and consistently achieved top results over the past few years, Emma Aicher tried to establish herself as an all-rounder. While the older one reliably reached the finish line, carving controlled and cleanly over the World Cup slopes, the DSV youngster danced at all parties at the same time, often dropped out and never made a breakthrough in any discipline.
Dürr catches up in the giant slalom, Aicher celebrates victories
In the last 2024/25 season the picture changed: Lena Dürr created a second focus discipline with the giant slalom, in which she is now one of the world’s best. At the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm she surprisingly made it into the top ten, and at the giant slalom in Copper Mountain in the US state of Colorado she celebrated her best result in the discipline and came sixth: “A great weekend”Dürr summarized on Sunday. Because she was the athlete who scored the most points in both Copper races combined, she even received an extra prize and an additional $10,000.
And Emma Aicher is also carving from one success to the next: At the end of the winter she won a Super-G and a downhill, and in the current season she continued furiously and won her first slalom.
Mini-DSV team is one of the best in the world
In the meantime, the pair’s driving styles also seem to have adapted: both have a calm, seemingly unspectacular swing, and both seem as if they are never at their limit. And yet – but perhaps that’s precisely why – the two of them are currently so successful. Suddenly the small German team of technicians, complemented by Jessica Hilzinger in the slalom and Fabiana Dorigo in the giant slalom, is one of the crème de la crème of the World Cup circus.
Dürr and Aicher: Medal candidates in five disciplines
The impressive form comes at just the right time: the Olympic Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo are coming up in February. With four top ten results in five races for Lena Dürr – including a podium finish in Copper Mountain – and with Emma Aicher’s debut victory in the slalom in Levi, the 34-year-old and the 22-year-old are currently among the medal contenders.
They have already proven that Dürr and Aicher can do major events: Dürr won bronze in the 2023 World Championships in Courchevel/Méribel, Aicher made his breakthrough at the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm: completely surprisingly, the youngster came sixth in the Super-G and downhill. But the DSV riders are still missing an Olympic medal.
Unbeatable in a duo?
But the two could be particularly hot in a duo. In the team combination, in which a speed driver and a slalom driver compete against each other and the times are added, Dürr and Aicher could form an unbeatable team. At the World Championships in Saalbach, Dürr ruined his chances of winning a medal with a mistake. Three World Cup victories and two second places later, the duo in Cortina should be even keener on precious metal. And so with Lena Dürr and Emma Aicher alone, the DSV has a chance of winning a medal in all five disciplines.