Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) (AFP) – Federica Brignone won her second Olympic gold of the Milan-Cortina Games on Sunday after storming to victory in the giant slalom, but Mikaela Shiffrin’s medal misery continued. Already a super-G winner at these Games, Brignone clocked a combined time of 2min 13.50sec to become the first Italian woman skier to win gold in two events at the same Olympics, less than a year after suffering a broken leg.
The 35-year-old finished 0.62sec ahead of joint silver medallists Sara Hector of Sweden and Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund to become Olympic and world champion in her favoured discipline. Brignone’s participation in the Olympics was in doubt as recently as three weeks ago due to the double fracture of the tibia in her left leg from a crash in a race in April 2025.
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But she confounded any doubts by extending by three days her own record as the oldest gold medallist, man or woman, in the history of her sport, performing incredibly again in brilliant sunshine despite near-constant pain from her career-threatening injury. She also revised her record as the oldest female medallist: she surpassed Lindsey Vonn with Thursday’s super-G win.
Shiffrin, meanwhile, now only has Wednesday’s slalom race in which to end her eight-year Olympic medal drought after only managing to place 11th. The US skier left the 2022 Beijing Games without a single medal from six races, failing to even finish in three, but in the intervening years has established herself as the greatest of all time with a record 108 wins on the World Cup circuit.
© 2024 AFP
