Goggia plays for the victory in the last corner
(Flavio Vanetti) Sofia Goggia's podium number 57 – who doesn't win but takes home third place -, the string of placings for Italy (after the champion from Bergamo here in sequence, up to sixth place, Elena Curtoni, Federica Brignone and Laura Pirovano), the return of Lindsey Vonn with a 14th place full more of lights than shadows. The first of the two super-Gs in St. Moritz, the third of the 2024/2025 World Cup season, does not disappoint the general expectations and, all things considered, those of the Italian team. But there is no encore of Beaver Creek because ours in one way or another make mistakes that allow us to Cornelia Huetter to impose herself again (the Austrian had already won in Beaver Creek downhill, a specialty for which she holds the trophy) and to Lara Gut-Behrami to finish in second place. The Ticino girl dreamed of a new challenge on the snow at home: she probably imagined she had made it when Sofia, who came down immediately after her, stopped 15 cents away from her time, but Huetter blew her calculations.
«Not all donuts come with a hole». Sofia Goggia's joke perfectly summarizes his ordeal and also, certainly, the resulting state of mind, neither disappointed nor sad, just veiled by the slightest regret. Not flawless at the top, but very fast in the central part, Super-Sofi is victory was played in the last corner and in the final meters. He had been training and racing in the USA for a month and it wasn't easy to readjust to the European snow and that of St. Moritz in particular. The Corviglia track, then, is full of bumps, blind spots, passages where it doesn't take much to make a mistake. Moral: good, not great.
«I was more tense than in the US, it wasn't easy to understand the “grip”: it seems like easy snow, but in reality it's aggressive. It was neither a bad nor a good test, I struggled and I know I have margins. But it was the third race since returning after the injury in February and so far I've never dropped off the podium: the solidity is there, I'm still happy.”
It was also, in some respects even more so, Elena Curtoni. Here a year ago he fell and fractured his coccyx, ending the season. However, this time the Corviglia track, where in 2022 she won right in front of Goggia, became her friend again: the Valtellina native finished 9 hundredths of a second from the podium and by just 1 he took fourth place from Brignone. There's enough left to be satisfied: «I lost two supports and I paid the price – says Elena -. But I know I'm there: I have to “free myself” a little longer, then I'll arrive too.” It's not the same mood as Federica Brignone, completely dissatisfied with her performance: «I threw my feet out there, but my body didn't follow: a couple of mistakes arose that way. I haven't been in time on a track that requires exactly this and more generally I make banal, stupid and trustworthy mistakes, even if I don't lack decision. I'm angry.”
And here we are at the Great Return. After 2,132 days from her farewell, having retired at the end of the 2019 season after having won a bronze medal in downhill at the World Championships in Aare, Lindsey Vonn has reopened a starting gate. At Beaver Creek she had only been a trailblazer, but she had already accumulated the FIS points necessary to get her a bib (number 31) already in Switzerland. Also a champion from 82 first places, winner of 4 World Cups and Olympic and World Championship medalshowever, she felt the emotion of a return which, at 40 years old, represents a challenge more with herself – having among other things a part of her right knee replaced by a titanium prosthesis – than with her opponents.
«Yes, she was nervous» admitted Chip Knight, the historic coach who followed her in training in New Zealand. Perhaps in certain points Vonn preferred not to take risks and take the measure of the track, but in others – she also did well in the central part, like Sofia Goggia – she was really effective. The numbers say that in the second intermediate he set the fourth time and the fifth in the lower part. He suffered 1''18 from Huetter and this gap formed at the top and before the final stretch. For now it is a convincing “come back” – much more than that of Marcel Hirscher, regardless of the injury that has now sent the Austrian champion back to the pits, perhaps permanently – but the difficult part comes from here on out: Lindsey will know, and by how much, improve? The one who knows no limits of progression is Marco Odermatt, dominator of the descent in Val Gardena, he designed the technical part like no one, imposing himself ahead of his compatriot Von Allmen and the American Cochran-Siegle. Fourteenth place for Casse, Paris poorly (25th).
