Austrian ski champion Matthias Mayer announces retirement

Triple Olympic champion Matthias Mayer announced his immediate retirement from skiing shortly before the start of the men's Super-G World Cup event in Bormio. 

"I did my last inspection today. I don't want it enough anymore," he told Austrian television ORF after looking at Thursday's course.

The 32-year-old Austrian made his World Cup debut in Sestriere in February 2009 and went on to rack up 11 World Cup victories and 45 podiums. 

His greatest successes, however, came at the Olympics where he outstripped his father Helmut Mayer's achievement of a silver medal in the 1988 Games in Calgary.

Golden run of Olympics 

Matthias won gold in the downhill in Sochi in 2014 and followed that with further Super-G golds in Pyeongchang in 2018 and Beijing earlier this year when he also won a downhill bronze.

"I had a wonderful last season with a third Olympic title and I started this one well," he said. "I'm happy. But I've had enough."

Since his debut in 2009, Mayer competed in 219 World Cup races and won 11 times, including classic races in Kitzbuhel, Wengen and Bormio.

In December 2015, Mayer broke two vertebrae in a super-G crash in Val Gardena while wearing a protective airbag under his race suit. He was out for seven months.

Mayer is the second reigning Olympic champion to leave ski racing this month after Beat Feuz, the 2022 downhill gold medalist from Switzerland, announced his retirement last week.

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