The comments to Sofia Goggia (30):
-You have a degree in poetry and Latin…
He raises his eyebrows. Her grin tells me I’m getting it wrong.
“This is a big surprise for me…” he says.
-You didn’t study any of that, then?
-Well, my mother is a Literature teacher. And my father is an engineer, but I…
And then he breaks out laughing.
So nothing, I hand over the microphone and shut my mouth.
I won’t ask anything else in this press conference, the meeting dedicated to Sofia Goggia, silver in the relegation of the World Cup finals in Andorra (after the Slovenian Ilka Stuhec) and champion of the general classification of the discipline .
(…)
I have read quickly and I suppose that wrong.
Sofia Goggia never ventured into the world of literature, although she has a large bookstore in her house in Bergamo (Lombardy).
“It’s very, very big,” he says. But it’s not enough for me anymore. I have to make it even bigger, because these balloons are huge.
And she contemplates the Crystal Globe that accompanies her, the heavy monument that rests on the table in front of her, from whose head she has hung her cap.
It feels like its owner, and it has kissed and caressed it, and it has touched it when the Andorran public was contemplating it, which is overwhelmed with heat (such is climate change, almost fifteen degrees Celsius plummeting over the station). From now on, that balloon will claim a place on the Bergamo shelf.
(It is the fourth that Sofia Goggia has collected in the relegation discipline, after her victories in 2018, 2021 and 2022).
“Well, you already have a shot at Lindsey Vonn,” observes a journalist.
And Goggia raises her eyebrows again, surprised again.
“Let’s see,” he says, “Vonn achieved eight Crystal Globes in the descent.” I have four. I am 30 years old… I don’t know, you propose that I win all the titles each season until he retires me. And that, taking into account that he should be active at 34 or 35 years of age. I don’t know, I don’t get the numbers… I think that what you are asking me is unattainable for me.
“But the bookstore would be prettier,” they insist.
-Ya, ya.
And you look at your right hand. She has a noticeable scar, it stretches from the back to the wrist.
Looking at his hand, maybe he is doing the math. Well, if she hadn’t broken so many things and so many times, perhaps she would have achieved more titles, more globes.
“But I ski like I ski, and I’m very proud of my technique and my results,” says Sofia Goggia, who is already as powerful as Deborah Compagnoni or as Isolde Kostner, two other legends of Italian alpine skiing, both from the 1990s.
Including the broken hand, an injury she suffered in December last year, when she fell in Saint Moritz, Sofia Goggia accumulates eight injuries, some serious, such as her cruciate ligament fracture in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in January 2022, her second blow to that knee.
“You ski all or nothing,” they tell him.
– Is there another way to do it? It’s true, I ski all or nothing. And I feel proud of how my career has gone. If I’m going to the limit it’s because I’m trying to go as fast as possible. And it is also true that on occasion I have lost stability. But I’ve worked on it and we’re fixing things. This season I have won five of my nine descents. And I have been second in three others. And I’ve only fallen once. I can’t ask for much more, right?
-Well, more space for your eight balloons -insists the journalist (this one continues intervening, not like the chronicler of La Vanguardia, who has collected his things).
-For eight, or for nine… -Sofia Goggia closes.
