1983–84 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup

The 18th World Cup season began in December 1983 in Kranjska Gora, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), and concluded in March 1984 in Oslo, Norway. The overall champions were Pirmin Zurbriggen (his first) and Erika Hess (her second), both of Switzerland.

FIS Alpine Ski World Cup 1983/84
Discipline	Men	Women
Overall	Pirmin Zurbriggen	Erika Hess
Downhill	Urs Räber	Maria Walliser
Giant Slalom/Super G	Ingemar Stenmark	Erika Hess
Slalom	Marc Girardelli	Tamara McKinney
Combined	Andreas Wenzel	Erika Hess
Nations Cup	Austria	Switzerland
Nations Cup overall	Switzerland
Competition
Locations	22	18
Individual	37	34

A break in the schedule in February was for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia). The debate over amateur and professional status of world-class skiers came to a head this year over the issue of the Olympic eligibility of the holders of FIS Class B licenses, which were approved in 1981 to permit skiers to accept sponsorship money directly instead of through their national ski federations or Olympic committees.[1][2][3] After protests by some of the other top skiers (including twin brothers Phil and Steve Mahre), the International Ski Federation (FIS) ruled in the summer of 1983 that the two holders of such licenses, Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden and Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein, would be ineligible to compete in the Olympics unless they surrendered those licenses and transferred the money received under them to the appropriate national ski or Olympic committees.[1][2][4]

Although Wenzel was willing to transfer her money as requested, Stenmark, who had moved his tax residence to Monaco and had received an amount estimated at over $5 million in payments during those three years, was not, because repatriating the money to Sweden would subject him to millions of dollars in Swedish income tax.[1][2][4] Despite the different reactions of the two, FIS decided to treat Stenmark and Wenzel identically and ban them both from Olympic competition in 1984, while permitting both to continue to compete in World Cup competitions.[2][4] After the Olympics, Hanni Wenzel, who had won two overall World Cup titles and finished second or third overall six more times, retired, and several of the other top skiers, such as the Mahre twins and Norway's Jarle Halsnes, turned professional and left the World Cup circuit. The backlash over this series of events, combined with the increasing television revenues from the Olympic Games, led to the end of the ban on professional athletes in the Olympics before the end of the decade.[5]

In another ruling regarding Olympic eligibility, FIS denied rising all-event skier Marc Girardelli, who was a citizen of Austria but who competed for Luxembourg on the World Cup circuit, the ability to compete in the Olympics for Austria, ruling that he could only compete for the country that he represented on the World Cup circuit.[1][4] As a result, Girardelli was not able to compete in the Olympics until after his Luxembourg citizenship was granted in the mid-1980s.[6]