Camille Rast already knows what she wants to do once her skiing days are over. In a wide-ranging interview with blue News, the 27-year-old slalom world champion from Valais said she plans to swap the slopes for the racetrack. “I’m going to be a race car driver,” she said.
The idea took hold last June at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Rast rode in the safety car at 280 kilometres per hour. Her driver was Tom Kristensen, who has won the race nine times. She added, half in jest, that she is already a world champion. For now, though, her focus remains on skiing, where she has made 123 World Cup starts and was eliminated only seven times.
Her rise has not been smooth. She was struck by glandular fever in the summer of 2017 and went through a mental slump that lasted until February 2018. A knee injury followed in 2019, and a heavy fall in Sestriere in February 2025 left her with a hip injury and Morel-Lavallée syndrome. She says she is still not fully recovered, with some days free of pain and others not. Even so, she won the slalom world title at the 2025 World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm and was the only skier to beat Mikaela Shiffrin in a slalom last winter.
Rast also offered a glimpse of life away from the start gate. She first asked to ski at the age of two after watching people on the slopes from a restaurant, and refused to hand back the rented skis the next day. She trains in a group of six that includes Wendy Holdener and Mélanie Meillard, her tidy roommate, and she speaks often with Shiffrin and Italian rivals such as Federica Brignone. “I want to be the best version of myself,” she said, describing her main goal. On love, she said simply that it happens when it happens.
The coming season carries extra weight. The World Cup opens on 24 and 25 October in Sölden, Austria, with the women’s giant slalom on the Rettenbach Glacier on the Saturday. Then, in 2027, the World Championships come to Crans-Montana, about 25 minutes from her home. Rast, who has been training in Ushuaia, Argentina, says she now has a better sense of what helps her through difficult periods, and she intends to stay calm about the results whatever they turn out to be.
