by Brent Robillard
Sixty years of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup
The first thing I heard was the cowbells.
They chimed across the Flying Mile in that familiar alpine chorus, a sound I hadn’t realized I missed until it rolled through Mont Tremblant’s pedestrian village and settled somewhere in my chest. The last time I stood at the edge of a World Cup finish zone was in 2022 at Lake Louise, working with Longines as they celebrated 190 years of watchmaking and their long, intertwined history with sport timing. Back then, the ringing felt like an overture. This time—as Tremblant marked the 60th season of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup and Longines clocked the 20-year milestone of its tenure as Official Timer—it felt like a reprise.
And what a stage for it.
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A Podium for Canada, and a Weekend to Remember
The energy at Tremblant was unmistakable from the moment I joined the crowd at the finish corral. Despite December’s early cold, thousands pressed up against the barriers, wrapped in red and white, waiting to see if one of their own could break through on home snow.
They didn’t have to wait long.
On Saturday, Valérie Grenier of St-Isidore, Ontario, carved two decisively strong Giant Slalom runs to clinch bronze—her first podium of the season, and one made all the sweeter on a mountain she grew up skiing. Watching her arc through the final gates, the crowd’s breath seemed to rise as one and hover in the frigid air before erupting in cowbells, cheers, and flags. It was impossible not to feel swept up in the moment.
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Longines Ambassador of Elegance
Close behind was Mikaela Shiffrin—Longines Ambassador of Elegance, the most decorated skier in World Cup history, and a figure who has been intrinsically linked with the brand since winning the Longines Rising Ski Stars prize three years consecutively as a teenager. Shiffrin finished sixth on Saturday and narrowly missed the podium on Sunday with a fourth-place finish, but her presence on the course commanded its usual electricity. Watching Shiffrin ski is to watch a kind of precision that feels born, not built—and yet also perfectly aligned with Longines’ ethos of measured excellence.
Together, Grenier and Shiffrin defined the narrative of the weekend: heritage and momentum, legacy and emergence, two arcs converging on Tremblant snow.
Longines and the Art of Timing the Impossible
Standing at the finish area, photographing racers as they tore through the beam at over 80 km/h, I kept glancing down at the Longines Conquest Chrono Ski on my wrist—the brand’s official watch of the FIS World Cup. It wasn’t lost on me that the same company measuring the race to a hundredth of a second had been refining this craft for more than 130 years.
Longines’ story in sport timing begins in 1890, when a movement called the Calibre 19.73 introduced the brand to precision competition timekeeping. The innovations came quickly after that: an electromechanical start-finish system in 1912 (arguably the origin of “down to the wire”), a 36,000 vph high-beat movement in 1914, and timing accuracy to a hundredth of a second by 1916.
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Their involvement in skiing dates back to 1924. By the 1930s, the watchmaker was pioneering light-beam timing and split-second chronographs, culminating in their first World Ski Championships in 1939. Over the next two decades, patents accumulated: electromechanical gates, photo-finish cameras, and the ingenious Chronocamera, all designed to capture truth where the human eye could not.
Fast forward to 2010, and Longines unveiled the Quantum Timer, capable of measuring to a millionth of a second. Then in 2017, the Live Alpine Data system arrived—a chip on a skier’s boot delivering real-time data on acceleration, speed, jumps, and trajectory. Suddenly, audiences weren’t just watching skiing; they were understanding it, feeling it, measuring its limits in real time.
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Katharina Liensberger of Austria gives her all in Mont Tremblant @calibre321
This history was very much alive on the slopes at Tremblant. Technicians walked the course each morning, checking cables the volunteers had run earlier in the week, aligning infrared photo cells, and testing backup systems. Ski racing is a “fail-safe” sport: two identical timing systems run in parallel, each ready to catch the hundredth of a second that separates victory from heartbreak. When a skier bursts through the starting wand, an electrical impulse starts the race. When they cross the beam, it ends.
It is elegant, mechanical, and utterly unforgiving—which is precisely why Longines feels so at home here.
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Mont Tremblant: Past, Present, and Atmosphere
Mont Tremblant is a rare venue in alpine skiing—one where the finish line empties directly into a bustling village of storefronts, cafés, and spectators pressed up against balconies. The mountain also has a unique World Cup history: after hosting a Women’s Downhill in 1983, where Canadian Laurie Graham took a historic home-soil win, Tremblant disappeared from the calendar for four decades.
Then, in 2023, it returned.
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Since then, Tremblant has embraced its role, stepping into the space left by Lake Louise as Canada’s World Cup stop for women’s racing. Saturday and Sunday felt like a continuation of that new chapter. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fans at the base—ski boots clattering on cobblestones, children waving maple-leaf flags, the distinct smell of cold air and woodsmoke drifting from the chalets—I understood why Alpine Canada is working to cement Tremblant as a permanent fixture on the FIS schedule.
The Flying Mile course, running straight toward the village, creates the effect of racers hurtling directly into the crowd’s embrace. It’s intimate, visceral, and uniquely Tremblant.
Timing on the Wrist: The Longines Conquest Chrono Ski
Throughout the weekend, whether photographing at the finish line or warming up at Prestige Lounge (après-ski style), I wore the Longines Conquest Chrono Ski—a limited run of 2,025 pieces produced to commemorate the FIS World Cup season. With its 42mm stainless steel case, crisp chronograph registers, and silicon balance spring, the watch feels purpose-built for an environment like this: technical, athletic, but refined in that unmistakable Longines way.
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Its design draws from the brand’s long heritage in alpine timing, but it’s also a modern tool. The watch comes paired with either a steel bracelet with a triple-security clasp or a black rubber strap—I opted for steel, which felt balanced against the cold and the weight of the camera gear I carried.
In photos and in use, the Conquest Chrono Ski became a recurring motif of the weekend: a reminder that every skier on the hill was racing not just the course, but the clock. And that the clock has been Longines’ domain for generations.
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A Weekend of Precision, Pride, and Atmosphere
As the second day of racing wrapped and the crowd spilled once more into the village, cowbells echoing between buildings, I found myself thinking about how seamlessly Tremblant blended sport, spectacle, and heritage. Grenier’s podium offered a moment of national pride; Shiffrin’s runs brought star power and technical mastery; Longines’ dedication to accuracy stitched the weekend together with a century of innovation; and the mountain itself provided a backdrop that felt both intimate and grand.
It was a reminder, not just of why alpine skiing captivates us, but of why timing matters. Every hundredth of a second contains a story, and Longines has spent more than a century learning how to tell it.
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About the author
Brent Robillard is a writer, educator, craftsman, and watch enthusiast. He is the author of four novels. You can follow him on Instagram.
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Article puts you right on the spot..heart beat in time with the ticking minuscule of a second.. gorgeous prose.. love the sentence ..-…..’tells a story and Longines has spent a century …telling it. Spot on. History and stories and heritage and pride.
Glad you liked it!