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Federica Brignone, the racing queen of Cortina, has won her second gold medal in the space of three days at the Winter Olympics. After her victory in the women’s Super-G on Friday, she won the giant slalom by just over six-tenths of a second.
As small as that gap sounds, it was an enormous margin in a race where there were only six-hundredths of a second between the three women who finished behind her; Sweden’s Sara Hector, Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund and Brignone’s Italian teammate Lara Della Mea. The gap between Brignone and second place was the same as that between second and 15th.
It was a rare and beautiful display of high-speed skiing on L’Olympia delle Tofane by a woman who has found once-in-a-lifetime form at her home Olympics. After it was over, Hector and Stjernesund, who had tied for second place, both dropped to their knees and bowed down before her.
“I crossed the finish line and I said: ‘I don’t know if it’s enough,’” Brignone said. “Then I heard the crowd and I said: ‘Oh, maybe yes.’ Then I turned around and I saw number one.”
She wasn’t the only one who heard them. The grandstands at the finish line were bouncing with overjoyed Italian fans, and the noise must have carried all the way across the other side of the valley.
“I have too many emotions. I can’t believe it, this is just crazy,” Brignone said. “My attitude was that I would be happy just to be here. That was already an achievement. Just to be back as an athlete.”
Three hundred days ago, Brignone could not say whether she would ever again be able to walk normally, let alone race in this fashion. Her crash during the giant slalom at the Italian national championships last April broke her left knee in four places and tore her anterior cruciate ligament. The 35-year-old had three rounds of surgery, a series of metal screws and plates inserted into the joint, then started out on seven months of intensive rehabilitation.
For most of the past year, all Italian sport has been left sweating over the question of whether she would be fit to compete here in Cortina or not. The physical recovery was only one part of what Brignone had to go through to be able to do it. The mental recovery was another.
The great Mikaela Shiffrin, who beat Brignone in this event in 2018, has spoken openly about how she has been struggling with PTSD since a bad crash at Killington in November 2024, when she sustained a puncture wound that very nearly killed her by ripping open her colon.
Shriffin is 30 and has won more World Cup races than any skier in history but readily admits that she is relearning how to race in the way she took for granted before that accident. She finished 11th here, almost a full second behind Brignone.
It was Brignone’s fifth Olympic medal after the silver and two bronzes that she won in Beijing and Pyeongchang. No Italian skier has ever won more.
