It must have been a fairy tale Giada D’Antonio, 16 years old, the youngest of the Italian delegation at the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics, and instead she came across the rough side of life in training before the Olympic giant slalom in Dobbiaco: Giada, after her debut in the team combined, should have participated in the special slalom on the 18th, but a bad fall following a forked pole caused her a serious injury: the bulletin of the Italian Winter Sports Federation speaks of “sprain trauma to the right knee with rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament”for which the Fisi medical commission, together with the athlete and his family, is evaluating the most suitable date for surgery on the cruciate.
Giada, with an open smile and long black curls, made her World Cup debut on Sunday 28 December, on the Semmering track in Austria. A citizen like Alberto Tomba, who grew up in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, she is proud of her Neapolitan accent and of the fact of being the only representative from the south in a delegation of those born in the Alps. She started skiing in Roccaraso in Abruzzo, following the passion passed on to her by her dentist father, who skied for pleasure and who certainly didn’t expect to have a budding skier in the house. Tbeen for the Vesuvio ski club, followed by Carlo Ceccato, recently training and studying in Predazzo in Trentino in Val di Fiemme where she moved with her mothera change described in this way in recent months Raceski magazine: «I live in Predazzo with my mother, I moved to ski better, to do things well and with less travel. I miss Naples, especially my father and my brother, but on the other hand I had to make this choice precisely for my skiing career. Of course, I also miss friends, but precisely in these situations you understand with whom you can strengthen a friendship. In Val di Fiemme I attend a public school, I also changed my school address, going from a sports high school to finance and marketing and for this I took supplementary exams.”
The choice, according to a story from her father at the time of her World Cup debut just a month and a half ago, was Giada’s, to avoid exhausting travel. With the family, at the cost of facing the great sacrifice of being separated 850 kilometers away, the decision was made to have mother Sandra of Colombian origins leave with her, in the belief that it was premature to make a 16-year-old girl face life alone.
Ever since Giada forged ahead by winning 23 FIS points in a single race on her international debut, quickly reaching the European Cup and then the World Cup, someone has dusted off the nickname that they had given her as a child at the ski club: Black panter.
Now he will need to bring out all his panther grit to recover from the misfortune of this challenging injury which arrived before he could fully play in his first Olympics, which at that age was all to be experienced without pressure like a game. But bad luck exists: however, the character is there and the example of her teammates, Federica Brignone and Sofia Goggia, is the best fuel: they are proof that recovery is possible. Go Jade!
