The Longines Future Ski Champions, set up with the collaboration of the FIS, allowed promising ski stars selected by their respective national skiing federation to compete against the best skiers in the world in their age category under racing conditions similar to those of the official World Cup races.
The first edition in 2013 gave the chance to fourteen young male skiers to take part to the competition. This year it was the turn of thirteen girls under the age of 16, from thirteen different countries, who had the opportunity to try the giant slalom piste. The competition was held alongside the women's race in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup at Val d'Isère.
Carlotta Saracco (Italy) was crowned the Longines Future Ski Champion 2014, with a time of 55:93 seconds. Second was Nella Korpio from Finland, followed by Ida Dannewitz from Sweden. All three received a medal during a prize-giving ceremony that took place in the center of Val d’Isère, with the presence of Charles Villoz, Vice President of Longines, Marcel Looze, FIS Marketing Manager and Jean-Claude Fritsch, former director of Val d’Isère Sports Club. The winning champion Carlotta Saracco received as well a Longines watch. Meanwhile, her national Federation, the Federazione Italiana Sport Invernali received a cheque for $20,000 to be used for promoting Alpine skiing among young people in that country.
This event was also an opportunity for Longines to present the Official Watch of the 2014/2015 skiing season, the Conquest 1/100th Alpine Skiing, a 100th of a second chronograph. This new model, fitted with a cutting-edge, exclusive movement, is a tribute by the brand to its long tradition of timing Alpine skiing competitions and enables its user to measure and display several intermediate times to one-hundredth of a second.
