Ski racer Sofia Goggia once said a few years ago that it has two very opposing sides: an emotional, fast-paced and a more rational one, sometimes even: poetic.
The emotional side is the one that caused the Italian a lot of attention in the Alpine Ski World Cup and also some shaking of the head: falls that twist her in the air, hit Goggia on the head, catch herself and continue driving. Curve positions where she lurches over the ice with her buttocks. Three cruciate ligament tears, fractures of the head of the thigh, ankle, and forearm. Races in which she loses a ski pole and wins anyway. Race after which she jumps for joy in the hot tub, in clothes and shoes. And that too: a car accident in which she rushes down a slope with the car, lands on a parked car – and crawls out unharmed.
Fewer people know the private, more rational side. Sofia Goggia is interested in Latin, literature and poetry. On social media, she not only publishes photos of cycling on the Schnalstal glacier lake in South Tyrol or of her dog, but also quotes from poets such as Constantine P. Cavafy and Giacomo Leopardi. When visiting the capital, Goggia can be found at the grave of the British poet John Keats, who is buried in Rome.
With a flag and escort: Sofia Goggia (left) celebrates her sixth success in the descent in Lake Louise.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)
When the ski racers were now in Lake Louise on the first high-speed rides of winter, Goggia made her debut after a long injury break. And she found herself right back where she had left the World Cup the previous winter: in her own world. On the first descent she put 1.47 seconds between herself and the runner-up, Breezy Johnson from the USA, further even Goggia had never moved away from the competition. On the second shot, she still had 0.84 seconds of credit on Johnson. Those were the leads that were last seen by a certain Lindsey Vonn. On Sunday, the Italian even won the Super-G, which she had not been so comfortable with recently.
The remarkable thing was: Goggia stabbed directly and daringly in the curves again, but the breakneck was something that was missing from her journeys this time. During the first race she felt “normal”, she said, as if she, the exuberant, had made a mishap. She then managed the second descent “safely and solidly”, although a solid Goggia still crashes wild enough over the ice slopes. In any case, that was probably the key to success: As if their two sides had found a balance, more than seldom before in Goggia’s career: the wild and the rational.
A little awakening experience, the 29-year-old said before the races in Canada, was the previous winter, the stop in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The Super-G had just been canceled, fog hung over the ski area, and Goggia, as fast as ever, crashed into a soft pile of snow – on a tourist slope. The shin bone was damaged again, the world championship in Cortina d’Ampezzo was gone, which robbed Azzurri of her great hope at the home game. At some point she hadn’t been able to cry any more tears, Goggia confessed at the time, and when she had recovered, she pondered – again – about the basics. “The injury made me think about my self-worth,” she recently told the Vienna daily default. It was time to give her more rational side more space again.
In the pre-winter, Goggia won the downhill classification – although she missed the end of the season due to an injury
Goggia had always brought out this shade in the winters before, otherwise she would hardly be in the World Cup today. Five years ago she stepped into the light of success for the first time; At that time she said that she only walked “at the border”, in the years she had “exaggerated” too often. In any case, from that winter onwards she achieved successes, the first victories in the World Cup, World Cup bronze in giant slalom (2017) and Super-G (2019), the Olympic victory in the downhill (2018), twice the downhill classification – in the previous one Winter even, although Goggia missed the last few descents due to injury, so many points she had accumulated before. If you factor out the races she followed on sick leave, she has now pulled six downhill runs in a row on her side. And then there was the hat trick in Lake Louise: Only the US ski racer Vonn, who is unique in her own way, was the last to succeed six years ago.
So that now seems to be the plan for the new winter: no longer walk on the border, but a little below it. How exactly she had strengthened her more rational side, Goggia did not reveal in Lake Louise. The highlight, she conceded so much, was not to be more devoted to polishing the left turn. “It’s always about how you approach your life,” she said after her second success in Canada. A skier can only reflect what is going on in the person on the other side of the piste. Breezy Johnson took the opportunity to take the Italian’s rides to a whole new level. “It advances the whole sport and shows what is possible in women’s skiing,” said Johnson. “Perhaps,” she added, “the men should take care of her by now.”