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Peter Fill

Italian alpine skier

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Peter Fill (born 12 November 1982) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from northern Italy. Born in Brixen, South Tyrol, he formerly competed in all disciplines, and later focused on the speed events of downhill, super-G, and combined. Fill won the World Cup season title in downhill in 2016 and in 2017, and the combined title in 2018.

01Career

Fill is an all-round skier. In the 2007 season, Fill was among the overall leaders for the overall World Cup title, the first Italian since Alberto Tomba to rank in the overall top ten.

Fill learned to ski at the age of three with the help of his first teacher Frieda Senoner. He achieved his first successes during his middle-school years, while he was coached by Peter Thomaseth. In 1997/98, he joined the Seiser Alm training center, where he was coached by his uncle Arnold. In the same year, he joined the B-Pool of the Bolzano-Bozen ski team (coached by Sepp Steinwandter). One year later, he advanced to the A-Pool under Stephan Feichter. In 1999, he won every discipline at the National Junior Championships and returned home with four gold medals; he was called "the phenomenon" by the Italian press.

In 2000, Fill joined the national team for the first time. His coach was Ernst Pfeifhofer, who continued as his coach for the following year in the Italian B-Team. At the same time he became a member of the Carabinieri sportsgroup. As a junior in 2001, he achieved his first important success on an international level, a bronze medal in the super-G at the Junior World Championships.

In 2002/03 Fill was part of the A-Team of Flavio Roda for the first time. In February 2002, Fill won the World Juniors and, as a result, took part in his first super-G race of World Cup on 7 March 2002 at Altenmarkt in Austria, where he placed 12th outpacing the Norwegian Lasse Kjus by one hundredth of a second. While Fill's strengths are the downhill and super-G, he is also competitive in the technical disciplines. On 13 January 2006, he stood third on the Ski World Cup podium of the super combined race in Wengen (Switzerland).

During the 2006 and 2007 World Cup seasons, Fill had seven podiums: four in downhill, two in super-G, and a combined, but no wins. On March 21, 2007, he became Italian Champion in multiple disciplines (twice in super-G and once in giant slalom), bringing his career total of national championships to three.

During the 2008 season, Fill was unable to reach the podium but managed to place in the top-ten 10 on six occasions. On 29 November 2008 in Lake Louise (Canada), he won his first World Cup competition, beating Swiss Carlo Janka and Swede Hans Olsson, becoming the seventh Italian in World Cup history to win a downhill competition.

On 4 February 2009, Fill won the silver medal in super-G during the World Championships in Val-d'Isère (France) on the icy and steep slope Face del Bellevarde. He managed to place himself before the three-time World Champion Aksel Lund Svindal, but was not fast enough to beat the Swiss Didier Cuche. His medal was the only one won by the Azzurri in the men's competitions.

Fill won his second World Cup race in 2016, the downhill at Kitzbühel, on a difficult dark and windy day on the Streif that ended the season of overall leader Aksel Lund Svindal. Fill went on to become the first Italian to win the World Cup downhill title, finishing tenth at the last downhill of the season in St. Moritz in March 2016 to finish 26 points ahead of Svindal.

Fill at Val Gardena in December 2013
Fill at Val Gardena in December 2013

02Personal

Fill is a cousin of retired giant slalom racer and fellow Kastelruther Denise Karbon. After junior high school, he started working as an auto body mechanic while attending a vocational school, which he left after becoming more involved in alpine skiing competitions. His mother tongue is German but he is also fluent in Italian and English. His idol in everyday life is his uncle Norbert Rier, leader of the Kastelruther Spatzen (a well-known folk group, especially in German-speaking countries) who dedicated the song "Wiedermal a super Zeit" to Fill for his silver medal in super-G at the World Championships in Val-d'Isère in 2009.

Since 2007, Fill's manager has been Andreas Goller, who previously represented Kristian Ghedina. His ski technician is South-Tyrolean Sepp Kuppelwieser (who was ski man for Kjetil André Aamodt for ten years).

During the 2009 season, Atomic, Briko, Finstral, and Leki, as official sponsors and suppliers, decided to reward Fill for his excellent results achieved during the season, offering him the chance to win the Artega GT sport car if he were to capture the downhill at the World Cup finals in Sweden at Åre in March.

03World Cup results

Season titles

Season standings

SeasonAgeOverallSlalomGiant
slalom
Super-GDownhillCombined
200219114, , 33, ,
20032065, 283445,
20042140, 44163315
20052230, 3630198
2006231650338146
2007246, 25947
20082526, 36271410
20092610, 311098
201027104, , , 38,
20112821, , 19179
20122935, , 252217
20133038, , 172421
20143115, , 10127
20153234, , 2020,
20163310, , 9116
2017346, , 5129
20183516, , 14111

Race podiums

  • 3 wins (2 DH, 1 SG)
  • 22 podiums (13 DH, 5 SG, 4 AC)
Season Date Location Discipline Place
200613 Jan 2006   Wengen, SwitzerlandSuper combined3rd
20 Jan 2006 Kitzbühel, AustriaSuper-G2nd
15 Mar 2006 Åre, SwedenDownhill3rd
200725 Nov 2006 Lake Louise, CanadaDownhill3rd
20 Dec 2006 Hinterstoder, AustriaSuper-G2nd
29 Dec 2006 Bormio, ItalyDownhill2nd
13 Jan 2007   Wengen, SwitzerlandDownhill3rd
200929 Nov 2008 Lake Louise, CanadaDownhill1st
16 Jan 2009   Wengen, SwitzerlandSuper combined2nd
20146 Dec 2013 Beaver Creek, USADownhill3rd
7 Dec 2013Super-G3rd
201628 Nov 2015 Lake Louise, CanadaDownhill2nd
29 Nov 2015Super-G3rd
23 Jan 2016 Kitzbühel, AustriaDownhill1st
20173 Dec 2016 Val-d'Isère, FranceDownhill2nd
27 Jan 2017 Garmisch, GermanyDownhill3rd
28 Jan 20172nd
25 Feb 2017 Kvitfjell, NorwayDownhill2nd
26 Feb 2017Super-G1st
15 Mar 2017 Aspen, USADownhill2nd
201829 Dec 2017 Bormio, ItalySuper combined2nd
12 Jan 2018   Wengen, SwitzerlandSuper combined3rd

04World Championship results

  Year   Age  Slalom  Giant 
 slalom 
Super-GDownhillCombined
200320DNF1, 132011
200522, , 1424DNF
200724, 23141113
200926, , 2145
201128, , 9143
201330, , 1412,
201532, , , , ,
201734, , 119DNF1

05Olympic results

  Year   Age  Slalom  Giant 
 slalom 
Super-GDownhillCombined
200623, , 13199
201027, , DSQ15DNF2
201431, , 87DNF2
201835, , DNF6DNF2
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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Peter Fill, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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