Beijing Olympics: women’s descent, Goggia is silver, Nadia Delago bronze. Gold at Suter

Sofia beaten only by the Swiss, for the first time two blue together on the downhill podium

From our correspondent Paolo Marabini

February 15
– YANQING (Cina)–

At 16 cents of the legend. Very close to a crazy day. Sofia Goggia screams all the joy of her at the finish, when she sees the board and her name is in front of all of her, with the other blue Nadia Delago and Elena Curtoni immediately behind her. But that joy will be throttled within 4 minutes by Corinne Suter, the Swiss world champion a year ago in Cortina, who in the last 30 seconds of the race invents overtaking and removes Queen Sofia from the Olympic throne, denying her what she would have been. the most extraordinary feat in the history of skiing. The silver that ends up around the neck of the Bergamo champion, with the bronze of Nadia Delago to frame her (never happened to blue skiing in Olympic history), remains a titanic medal, a result that until a few days ago no one dared to believe.

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Stronger than before

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23 days after the injury in Cortina, complete with a sprain in her left knee, partial injury to the cruciate ligament and a microfracture of the fibula, she was able not only to get back on skis, but to do it as an absolute protagonist. That umpteenth injury, another in the vicinity of the great event, like when a year ago the girl from the Yellow Flames had to give up the World Cup in Cortina, would have stopped anyone, but not the woman of the triumph of PyeongChang, the woman of miraculous recoveries, the indomitable Bergamo who never gives up, the champion who, like the Phoenix, rises again every time. And every time you almost get the impression that she comes back stronger and more aggressive than before

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One step away from the record

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A very heavy silver, which left a bad taste in the mouth of the outgoing champion only for a few minutes, then delighted with this second place that catapulted her into one of the greatest ever in world skiing. Of course, winning again he would have equaled the two goals of the German Katja Seizinger, gold in Lillehammer ’94 and Nagano ’98, but it is also fair to recognize the merits of Corinne Suter, a Swiss who asserted her skills as a sliding glider and slipped a coupled fabulous.

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Italian dream

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At the foot of the Yanqing Rock track, Italy has dreamed for a long time, and in any case in the end it placed two athletes on the podium and three in the top 5. Elena Curtoni, who started with the number 1, was in the lead until Nadia’s descent Delago, who with the bib number 10 exceeded it by 43 cents. Then Sofia, with 13, created an image never seen in the Olympic descent: three tricolor flags in the first three places. We knew very well that she hadn’t ended up there, but it was a wonderful feeling. There were still at least 5-6 athletes capable of ruining that wonderful picture: Corinne Suter, the German Kira Weidle, the Austrian Cornelia Huetter, above all Lara Gut-Behrami, the super-G winner, and finally the other Austrian Tamara Tippler . Only Suter has fully respected the prediction and Italy has collected two medals, which are added to the silver won by Federica Brignone in super-G.

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At the age of 30, Sofia embellishes her already very rich collection, which also includes two downhill World Cups, a silver downhill and a giant bronze at the World Cup, 17 victories and 39 podiums in the Cup. On the contrary, however, Nadia Delago actually made her debut in the gallery of the blue from the podium. Born in Bressanone on 12 November 1997, younger sister of the other blue Nicol, who finished eleventh and then immediately ran to embrace her in the arrival parterre, the girl from Selva Val Gardena had the best results of a 4th and a 5th places obtained this season in the slopes of Zauchensee and Garmisch.

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The numbers of the shipment

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The blue expedition to Beijing thus reaches 13 medals. In total, however, the total loot is 137: 42 golds, 42 silvers and 53 bronzes. In the meantime, there are 35 Olympic podiums in history for skiing. Four other times there had been two Azzurri on the ski podium in the same race: in Albertville 1992 Josef Polig and Gianfranco Martin in the combined; in Sapporo 1972 his cousins ​​Gustavo and Rolando Thoeni silver and bronze in slalom behind the Spanish Ochoa; in Innsbruck 1976 Piero Gros gold and Gustavo Thoeni silver always in slalom; in Salt Lake City 2002 Daniela Ceccarelli and Karen Putzer gold and bronze in super-G.

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