2017 Alpine World Ski Championships Quiz

Answer: St. Moritz

St. Moritz hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships for the fifth time in 2017 - having previously held the event in 1934, 1948, 1974 and 2003. The resort had also previously hosted the second-ever edition of the Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and it became a two-time Olympic host in 1948 as the world championships were held in conjunction with the Winter Olympics in that year.

The 2017 world championships events - men's and women's downhill, alpine combined, slalom, giant slalom and super-G, plus a mixed team event - all took place on the Piz Nair mountain, whose peak is over 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level.

Kitzbühel (Austria), Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy) and Courchevel (France) are all resorts that hosted Alpine Ski World Cup events during the 2017-18 season. Of them, only Cortina d'Ampezzo had hosted a Winter Olympic Games prior to the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships (the 7th Games in 1956).

Answer: Nicole Schmidhofer

Nicole Schmidhofer was 27 years old and competing in her third Alpine Ski World Championships when she became the somewhat unexpected winner of the women's super-G event, ahead of top racers Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein and Lara Gut of Switzerland in silver and bronze medal positions, respectively. Other big names such as the USA's Lindsay Vonn and Austria's reigning Olympic champion, Anna Veith, failed to finish the course.

Schmidhofer's previous best results on the international stage were a second-place finish in the super-G at a World Cup event in 2013, a third-place finish in the downhill at another World Cup event a year later, and fourth place in the downhill at the 2015 world championships.

The incorrect options were all Austrian Olympic super-G champions - Andrea Fischbacher won in 2010 and Michaela Dorfmeister won in 2006 (and took downhill gold as well).

Answer: Oldest world champion

Erik Guay was competing in his seventh Alpine World Ski Championships in 2017 and was 35 years and 187 days old when he won the super-G title. This made him the oldest skier to take a world championship gold medal, as the previous record-holder, Hannes Reichelt of Austria, had been just 34 years and 215 days old when he won the super-G event at the 2015 championships.

In addition to taking the gold medal in the super-G, Guay also won a silver medal in the downhill event. He had previously won the world championship title in downhill at the 2011 championships held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Answer: Downhill and slalom

The final positions in the alpine combined competition are determined by adding together each skier's times from one run in downhill and a second over the slalom course. These are entirely separate runs from those used to determine the medal positions for the individual disciplines. While some competitors are all-rounders, others tend to favour one discipline over the other and the final results after the slalom are often considerably different to the interim standings following the downhill.

The eventual champion, Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, was a slalom specialist and also took the silver medal in the individual slalom event. In the combined event, she was in seventh place following the downhill run but vaulted up into first place overall by posting the second-fastest time in the slalom. Holdener's team-mate, Michelle Gisin, took the silver medal by recording the fourth-fastest time in both the downhill and the slalom. None of the top three after the downhill event completed the slalom course.

Answer: Beat Feuz

Beat Feuz took the gold medal in the downhill event after finishing in bronze medal position at the previous world championships in 2015. He also competed in the super-G event, finishing in 12th place. Skiing on home snow can often be an advantage and St. Moritz had proved to be a good venue for Feuz as a year earlier he had taken a double win in both downhill and super-G at a World Cup event held there.

The surnames of the incorrect options belonged to genuine competitors in the men's downhill at the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships - Kjetil Jansrud (4th), Aleksander Kilde (6th) and Peter Fill (9th) - but those first names are entirely fictional.

Answer: Bronze medal position

Lindsey Vonn's bronze medal in the downhill event was her only medal at the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships, as she failed to finish the course in the super-G. She had previously won both events at the 2009 championships, was the 2010 Olympic downhill champion and had taken a total of 20 World Cup season titles, including four overall titles as well as six consecutive downhill titles between 2008 and 2013.

The 2017 women's downhill title went to Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia, with Stephanie Venier of Austria finishing as the runner-up.

Answer: Slalom and giant slalom

Marcel Hirscher is a specialist in slalom and giant slalom and has been described as one of the best alpine skiers of all time. In addition to his gold medals in the slalom and the giant slalom at the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships, he also took home a silver medal in the alpine combined event (despite the fact that he is not an individual downhill competitor). Those two gold medals were his fifth and sixth world championship titles. He also held multiple World Cup season titles in both disciplines and later went on to become the 2018 Olympic champion in both giant slalom and alpine combined.

Austria took a 1-2 finish in both the slalom and giant slalom as Roland Leitinger took silver in the slalom and Manuel Feller took silver in the giant slalom. The men's alpine combined title went to Switzerland's Luca Aerni.

Answer: Mikaela Shiffrin

Skiing sensation Mikaela Shiffrin followed up her world championship titles in slalom from 2013 and 2015 with yet another victory in the discipline in 2017, maintaining her unbeaten status in the event at the Alpine World Ski Championships. She had won her first title in 2013 at the age of just 17 and became the Olympic champion in Sochi a year later. She also competed in the giant slalom in 2013, 2015 and 2017, but 2017 marked her first world championship medal success in that discipline - she finished second to win a silver medal.

The incorrect options were the three US women who competed in the mixed team event at the championships. The team were eliminated in the first round by Canada.

Answer: France

The winner of the women's giant slalom event at the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships was Tessa Worley of France, so therefore it was France that won the mixed team event. In addition to Worley, the other women on the French team were Adeline Baud Mugnier, who took 14th place in the giant slalom and failed to finish in the slalom, and Nastasia Noens who finished 12th in the slalom. The French men were Mathieu Faivre (9th place in the giant slalom), Julien Lizeroux (disqualified in the slalom) and Alexis Pinturault (who had top ten finishes in the giant slalom, super-G and alpine combined).

The mixed team event was first held at the world championships in 2005. It is a knockout-style tournament over a slalom course. Countries are drawn against each other according to their World Cup rankings and two male and two female skiers from each country's team race head-to-head. The team who win most of these individual races advances to the next round. In the event of each team winning two races apiece, then the times of each country's fastest man and fastest woman are added together and the team with the fastest pair is declared the winner. Eventually, the two surviving teams compete in the final to determine the gold and silver medal positions. In 2017, France defeated Russia, Norway and Sweden on their way to their final showdown against Slovakia, while Sweden won the bronze-medal match against Switzerland.

(Austria were eliminated in the quarter-finals and Slovenia lost in the first round.)

Answer: False

Host nation Switzerland took second place on the overall medals table with three golds, two silvers and two bronzes. They were beaten by their neighbours and arch-rivals Austria, whose skiers won an additional two silver medals compared to Switzerland's haul. France finished third with two golds, while Canada and the USA tied for fourth place as both had one medal of each colour.

The 2017 Alpine World Ski Championship featured skiers from a total of 77 different nations, but the medallists came from just 11 of those - Slovenia, Norway, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Sweden, Germany and Italy being the ones not previously mentioned. No countries from outside Europe or North America managed to secure a medal on this occasion.