Sofia Goggia triumphs in the Beaver Creek super-G

Sofia Goggia achieved the feat by winning the super-G in Beaver Creek, the first of the World Cup season but above all ten months after the bad foot injury that occurred during training in Ponte di Legno. Goggia won in 1’03″90, preceding the Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami by 48 cents and the Austrian Ariane Raedler by 55. For the Fiamme Gialle champion from Bergamo, this is victory number 25 in the World Cup.

Sofia from Valle d’Astino, in the province of Bergamo, in the parterre of the ‘Birds of Prey’ track they already call her the ‘immortal’ after a superlative performance at the end of which she left a heavy gap on a champion of the caliber of Gut- Behrami, almost half a second. 314 days after the tragedy at Ponte di Legno (it was February 5th), ‘Sofi’ went back to looking at everyone from top to bottom. He did it in the Beaver Creek super-G with a sublime performance confirming that that bad fracture of the right tibia and tibial malleolus, which was surgically reduced, is part of the past.

Yesterday the Italian had come second in the descent, just 16 hundredths away from victory, but today she wanted to amaze the world by putting everything behind her. The champion from Bergamo had not won the World Cup since the downhill race in Altenmark last January 13th. In Beaver, Goggia achieved success number 25 of his career, podium number 56. Third was the surprising Austrian Ariane Raedler on a day that gave important placings to the Italian team, starting with Federica Brignone, fifth, 9 hundredths from the podium. Marta Bassino was sixth, Elena Curtoni ninth, making a great recovery after her injury last season, Roberta Melesi eleventh, followed by Laura Pirovano eighteenth and Vicky Bernardi twenty-third. Sisters Nicol and Nadia Delago were out, with the latter the victim of a bad slip which fortunately did not cause her physical damage.

Goggia: “I put malice, technique and instinct into it”

“I put a mix of competitive determination, technique and a lot of instinct on the track. I’m grateful to be back competing in the World Cup, it was a tough challenge in the last few months, now I’m still here and I don’t think about the injury. I’m very happy of this performance, compared to the downhill I was able to ski better.” These are the first words of Sofia Goggia who today won the Beaver Creek World Cup super-giant, ten months after her injury and foot surgery.