1978–79 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup
The 13th World Cup season began in December 1978 in Austria and concluded in March 1979 in Japan.
| FIS Alpine Ski World Cup 1978/79 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Discipline | Men | Women | |
| Overall | Peter Lüscher | Annemarie Moser-Pröll | |
| Downhill | Peter Müller | Annemarie Moser-Pröll | |
| Giant slalom | Ingemar Stenmark | Christa Kinshofer | |
| Slalom | Ingemar Stenmark | Regina Sackl | |
| Nations Cup | Austria | Austria | |
| Nations Cup overall | Austria | ||
| Competition | |||
| Locations | 18 | 14 | |
| Individual | 33 | 26 | |
The overall winners were Peter Lüscher of Switzerland, his first overall win, and Annemarie Moser-Pröll of Austria, her sixth (which remained the record until 2017–18, when Austria's Marcel Hirscher won his seventh overall title). Although Ingemar Stenmark did not win the overall title due to restrictions on the number of races that counted for overall championship points, he won 13 races during the season (including the last four in a row and six of the last seven) to break Jean-Claude Killy's record of 12 race wins during the inaugural season of the World Cup, which (as of 2018) still stands as the record for most wins by a male skier in a World Cup season.
The World Cup race scoring system, which had remained unchanged since the start of the World Cup in 1967 as a "Top 10" points system (ranging from 25 points for first, 20 for second, 15 for third, and down to 1 point for tenth), was amended this season for the final two downhills and the final three giant slaloms and slaloms to a "Top 25" system (ranging from 25 points for first to 1 point for 25th). This system was abandoned after the end of the season, and a new "Top 15" system was introduced beginning in 1980.