Intelligent and self-deprecating, spontaneous and authentic, never banal. And a winner. Stronger than pain, bad luck, potholes on the track. As only true champions can do, Sofia Goggia regenerates from mistakes like the phoenix. After almost a year of “only” placings, he returns to the first step of the podium in Val d’Isère on 21 December 2025, 11 months after his last victory in the Cortina downhill. Make up for yesterday’s downhill mistake. With roles reversed, a story we’ve already seen. In 2018 in PyeongChang, when in the Super-G he missed out on a possible Olympic gold with a mistake at the end, the same day he analyzed the race on social media with admirable clarity, and then, in the downhill at three in the morning in Italy a few days later he won the Olympic gold. Because Sofia is like this: complicated, by her own admission, inclined to think, sometimes to overdo it, but clear and courageous.
It takes courage to ask the body to reset the memory of the pain and go back to pushing hard after the infinity of injuries like yours and Sofia has them. To sell. It also takes a lot to admit that when you feel like you can’t do it on your own you need to know how to ask for help and admit it. Even to the sky sometimes. And Sofia knows how to do it.
Just a few days ago he celebrated his last exam at the political science university at Luiss, with words that were not to be taken for granted a month before the Olympic Games when athletes often cannot see beyond the lines of the field: «For some time I had felt within myself the urgent need to explore something that was outside the perimeters of my skiing activity, I felt that I was missing something that could be constructive for my life”, he wrote, “To be able to take these approximately 25 exams, always in person, mostly taking advantage of the only sessions in which I could take them (the summer ones in my case for obvious reasons) it took commitment, energy, dedication, organisation, discipline, optimization of time, a study method that at the beginning I struggled to find, a mental plasticity that I thought I had lost, the propensity to develop a thought that could be critical, which was perhaps my greatest curiosity, as well as acquiring knowledge that could broaden my views by giving me a more complete general overview.” A lesson for many children and families in which sporting ambitions are nurtured.
On the track and in life Sofia is never afraid to take her penalty kick, even if she knows she can miss. He calls “goggiate”, making fun of himself, the errors of impetuosity and naivety. Maybe without it she would have won more but she wouldn’t be Sofia, and in any case there is never any proof. Now with 65 podiums in the World Cup she knows that no one will be able to judge her for her mistakes, because generally it is by making mistakes and analyzing herself that she finds the way to redeem herself, like today. He knows that as De Gregori sings, a champion is judged by altruism, and Goggia has it: he transforms rivalries into opportunities for growth and is immune to the virus of envy, proof of this is his relationship with Lindsay Vonn with whom he is triggering, in Lindsay’s rebirth at the age of 41, a new rivalry made of friendship and mutual respect.
She doesn’t even lack imagination: It’s difficult to imagine a glamorous and social champion like her and to invent an investment in a farm of Livornese DOC hens that live wild in the woods, listen to classical music and produce organic eggs.
But this is Sofia’s world, made up of solid affections, of a mother who is not resigned to seeing her suffer: “She didn’t forgive skiing for what it did to me”, she once told us after one of the many terrible injuries, “but now she has made us a little at peace knowing that this is what makes me happy”, and a father in whose embrace she takes refuge in really difficult moments: “Because in the end, affection is the only thing that counts”.
Not only that, Sofia Goggia is someone who knows how to say thank you, without ever complaining.
A few days ago the Olympic flag bearers came out and the president of CONI Buonfiglio admitted a thought for her, that among the four there is none. She was designated for Beijing 2022, but was unable to be there, busy recovering from yet another accident until the last day before the race. Replaced in the race by Michela Moioli, she carried the flag of closure, but it’s not the same thing.
The wish we wish her and which we transform into an appeal is that in the mystery of the Milan Cortina 2026 Opening there is, somewhere, a space for Sofia, suited not only to her coat of arms, but to her fair play, to her personality. If the Olympic spirit exists it blows inside Sofia Goggia and an Olympics at home must find a place of honor for her.
