Cyprien Sarrazin, the new French sensation already in history

4 mins

“ When I started to feel good in my life, on skis, there was no longer even a need to work », explained the Hautes-Alpes skier on Wednesday, three days before achieving the unthinkable on the Austrian slope. Words which echoed those made after his first victory of the season in Bormio (Italy) at the end of December: “ I’m finally me at 29, I found myself as a man and it shows on the skis “.

Born in 1994 in Gap, Cyprien Sarrazin has been searching for a long time since his debut on the world circuit in 2016, before finding his way last season in speed events. It was on the slopes of Dévoluy, alongside his instructor father, that “Cyp” learned to ski. Very quickly, his adolescence was marked by a few victories, but above all by repeated injuries in which his tibia was always tilted. When he arrived in the World Cup at the age of 22, he won, to everyone’s surprise, the parallel giant of Alta Badia (Italy), only his seventh race on the world circuit.

Long convalescences

But the following seasons were marked by serious injuries. In January 2018, he fell during training in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany), which caused him severe head trauma. Convalescence is painful. “ There had to be zero screens, I didn’t have to read, I had to go 10 days without a phone, without anything at all », he explained to AFP in October 2018.

Eleven months later, he put on a few bibs again, but a fracture in his right knee once again sidelined him from the slopes for the rest of the winter. Back at the end of 2019, he won a magnificent second place on the giant of Alta Badia but will never manage to confirm this success.

So, at the start of the 2022-2023 season, the skier from Dévoluy makes the decision that will change his career: the shift towards speed events. “DSince I was very little, I have had this fiber, this instinct for speed “, he told AFP in January 2023. “ I love speed, a taste for risk », added Sarrazin, also a big fan of mountain biking.

Appreciated by his teammates and his opponents alike, “Crazy Cyp” quickly made an impression with his extreme risk-taking which earned him some spectacular off-track runs and a reputation as a hothead. The results are there: he took a good 6th place in the Val Gardena descent in December 2022 before achieving the best time in one of the training sessions in… Kitzbühel in January 2023. But a back injury forced him to do a cross on the Worlds in Courchevel.

“Imposter syndrome”

To succeed in channeling himself on the slope, Sarrazin, rather calm and composed when he does not have skis on his feet, declared on Wednesday that he had started seeing a psychologist last spring, “ for work on myself, as a man, not at all on skis, […] It must have been three months since the coaches said anything technical to me.” He is also accompanied by a mental trainer and an “energy coach “.

A mental trigger that ended up paying off. After two frustrating fourth places in Val Gardena in mid-December, two weeks later in Bormio he achieved the round of his life to score his first success in downhill and free a French clan which had not won for eight years in the discipline. “ Before Bormio, I told myself for three days that I had the right to win, I never allowed myself to win, I had a kind of imposter syndrome », he summed up before gluing the ski world to the famous Streif slope.

After achieving his third World Cup success during the Super-G in Wengen (Switzerland) last weekend, Sarrazin did better than do it again. The new hero of French skiing is launched into an unexpected quest for the crystal globe downhill alongside Swiss genius Marco Odermatt. “ Nothing has changed except my status “, he judged on Wednesday.