Ski World Championships: Goggia on the assault for the downhill title

From our correspondent Paolo Marabini

February 10th
– Meribel (France)

Best time also in the last test. And even with 46/100 on the second, the Austrian Puchner. She means something, but up to a certain point. Goggia herself immediately underlines it: “I don’t know how much the others have thrown, if someone has lifted their foot before her”.

Tomorrow everything will reset, tomorrow will be the day of days. The day of her, the one to go to the assault of the only success that she still lacks in “hers” descent of hers, after the Olympic gold and after the three specialty World Cups (and the fourth is already in pocket). Even if you have already won a silver and a bronze at the World Championships, but in super-G and in giant. “I had a good race – says the Bergamo native -: I knew I had to put in a little more intensity than yesterday too. It’s a track that needs to be interpreted a lot, the big difficulty is being able to interpret the ropes of the lines in certain curves, the longer ones, which have different angles of incidence between the first and second parts. There are still some things to sort out, the goal is to get to increase the speed of those 3 km per hour, playing on motor advance”.

MOOD

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It is a calm, serene Goggia who has put the pain of the loss of her friend Elena Fanchini behind her. “I don’t feel any pressure-she says-she: I got up with a lighter heart. Yesterday had been a devastating day, from the moment we learned of Elena’s death we all went haywire. I was hit on skis, but as soon as I got back to the hotel I cried non-stop for three hours. At one point I went to Gionni’s room (Giovanni Feltrin, the coach of the sprinters, ed), a person who has known me since I arrived in the national team at a very young age, I threw myself on his bed, hugged him and we cried together for a while’. All these tears have done me good. I’ve never cried like this for anyone, but thinking about it, I’ve actually never lost someone so close to me.” Approaching these World Cups hasn’t been easy. First the injury to his left hand, then two too many slips, but now Sofi is fine. “All the weapons are in place – she concludes – and what I have is enough to do well. In the end I’m back at the gate of a World Cup (he missed Cortina 2021 due to injury, ed), which is every child’s dream”.

MEN

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Good news for the Azzurri also from the second round of the men’s downhill, which will award the medals on Sunday in Courchevel on the Eclipse slope. Although the times in practice must always be taken with a grain of salt, Christof Innerhofer was the fastest of all, leaving the Canadian James Crawford, yesterday’s super-G gold, at 31/100 and the Swiss Alexis Monney at 34. Dominik Paris also did well, who evidently absorbed well the big blow to the right thigh remedied in the fall in super-G: for the blue speed leader fifth time, 48/100 from Innerhofer, with Florian Schieder sixth, 4 hundredths further behind. However, some big names such as Kilde, Odermatt, Kriechmayr and Hemetsberger did not start.