He supported her, accompanied her, held her hand until the last day. She now she cries, thinking back to the many beautiful moments shared. Sofia Goggia she said she ran out of tears; Nadia Fanchini, Elena’s sisterthe skier who died yesterday at the age of 37 after a long fight with cancer, retraces the shared smiles: “My life – she says – is full of memories of her. We have always been very close, we have always lived together on the track but also in illness. We never broke up. Elena was our world, she was my sister. Now it will be difficult for us. She was a wrestler, she never complained. She had a great will to live, she gave everything, she never gave up until the end. But she, unfortunately, won him».
He won that tumor that Elena discovered in 2017, which forced her to put aside her greatest passion, which she won, before it recurred in recent weeks: «We discovered the recurrence and it was hard, because he suffered so much. Because she couldn’t control the pain. It was a pain for us to see her suffer so much. Seeing this bad evil that was destroying her. “My head is there, but my body isn’t there,” he told me. We are in 2023 and unfortunately there is still no cure for cancer. She was also a testimonial for Airc and we believe in research, we must ensure that this disease can be defeated». And she recounts the last conversation with emotion: Â «I told her:“ You are the most important person in my life, I love you so much ”. And she replied: “I know”».
While the images of the World Ski Championships underway in Meribel and Courchevel (where Federica Brignone and Marta Bassino won two gold medals) scrolled on the TV in the funeral home of Pian Camuno (in the province of Brescia), also the mother of Elena and Nadia tells how the passion of the daughters for the snow was born: «The first time Elena went on the snow she was three years old, with her dad . When she was 7 years old she had her first competition, and both she and Nadia always won. I didn’t expect that. They said to me: “You are never here”. But we are two workers, we couldn’t go there all the time, because we also worked on Sundays to allow the girls to compete. Eli, you were my life. Now I know you’re fine where you’ve gone. I know I mustn’t cry.’
