MERIBEL – A bewitched World Cup, for Sofia Goggia. No gold, no medal, no classification at all, because in the final the Bergamo player went through a red door and was disqualified. Her clear superiority in downhill throughout the season did not materialize in a gold medal that she has been missing for five years now, between the Olympics and the World Championships. Almost as a sign of fate after days of pain over the death of Elena Fanchini, Sofia made a mistake while the funeral of her friend was ending in Solato di Pian Camuno.
Ski, Sofia Goggia: “Wild and bizarre. Fleeing from mediocrity I became number 1”
by Mattia Chiusano
Right from the start it was understood that the blue wasn’t at her best, nothing to do with the performance the day before in practice. Even if in the first intermediate she is ahead by 8 hundredths, on the next jump she lands badly spreading her skis. On the second lap she is 8 cents behind, which then increased to 15, with a slightly lower speed than the French Gauche. On another jump after a minute of competition she lands crushed, but she is recovering, 9 cents recovered in that stretch. When the stadium is now in sight, mistakes turn to danger: Sofia leans heavily on the ground at 112 kmh, almost crosses her skis, is catapulted forward with her torso risking crashing but remains standing as the speed rises to 119 kmh . She fails to avoid the door, which she enters with her left ski. She goes off the trajectory, on the final curves, and she crosses the finish line third, 47 cents from the Swiss Flury and 43 from the Austrian Ortlieb. Before the images re-propose his disqualification fork. The first two will resist until the end: the winner is the Swiss Jasmine Flury, silver to the Austrian Nina Ortlieb, bronze to the Swiss Corinne Suter. Best blue Elena Curtoni 13th, ahead of Laura Pirovano 14th, 18th Nicol Delago.
“I’m sorry, it’s really a shame, it hurts to know that no one else will be able to give me back a chance to win a medal at this world championship. It’s been a tough week, but life goes on, let’s think about the next races, this doesn’t change anything in my wonderful career”
This World Championship, happy until Wednesday evening with the two golds of Federica Brignone in combined and Marta Bassino in super-G, is dramatically divided into two. There is the before, with the medals, and the after, with the news of Elena Fanchini’s death at the age of 37. Teammate of the blues, friend of Sofia Goggia, who had told of the three hours in tears, of crying with Johnny Feltrin, speed coach. “I’ve never cried like this in my life, but then again I’ve never lost a friend.” By a sad twist of fate, just as Sofia Goggia was descending, the funeral of the blue who died after years of battling intestinal cancer was taking place in the parish church of Solato di Pian Camuno. In the presence of her husband Denis Ottelli Zoletti, her parents Giusy and Sandro, her sisters Nadia and Sabrina. “Faced with an early, aggressive death, we feel the injustice, we are angry with God” said the parish priest in his homily, “but we are certain that Elena is in the arms of the Lord. From your home you can see the Adamello, a window on eternity and beauty”.
