The Italian ski world champion and overall World Cup winner Federica Brignone is back on the slopes after a long injury break.
72 days before the start of the Olympic Games, Italian alpine skier Federica Brignone started training on the slopes. She fell badly at the national championships in April and suffered a fractured tibia and fibula and a torn cruciate ligament in her left leg. The dream of starting the Olympics in February was thus shaken.
She doesn’t know how realistic a start at the Olympic Games would be: “I’ll try it. I work really hard for it“, explained the 37-year-old. But she would only compete if she really felt physically ready, she said in mid-October before the start of the new World Cup season.
Brignone: “First phase of rehabilitation completed”
But returning to the slopes is initially a positive signal. A full 237 days after her horror fall, she was back on public slopes and completing easy descents on recreational skis. She was accompanied by Italian national coaches who accompanied her in this second phase of rehab. Brignone have “completed the first phase of rehabilitation and received the green light from the medical commission for the second” said in a statement Federazione Italiana Sport Invernali (FISI).
Brignone dominated the World Cup last season and secured the big crystal ball as well as the overall ranking in the downhill and giant slalom rankings with a total of ten victories. At the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm she won gold in the giant slalom and silver in the super-G. What the Milanese woman is still missing from her collection is Olympic gold.