The World Championships in Cortina ended with some bitterness for Italy. Nearly missed medals and many missed opportunities. Despite this, we managed to bring home two medals. We would like to thank the excellent Marta Bassino for winning the gold medal in the women's parallel bars on a par with Liensberger. A well-deserved gold, despite the controversy surrounding the organisation of the women's parallel bars due to the time difference between the blue and red lanes. We would also like to thank the champion Luca De Aliprandini for his silver medal in the giant slal, who, against all the odds, put in a fantastic race that even he did not expect.
It was a world championship full of surprises and confirmations, a world championship that taught us to fight, especially in this difficult period, to pursue our dreams, to be better and to believe in ourselves more.
World Championship highlights
We expected medals from some of the athletes and so it was. Confirmation came from Kriechmayr, Corinne Suter and Lara Gut-Behrami in the Super-G and downhill. A double for Kriechmayr in both races. Lara Gut-Behrami, gold in the Super-G and bronze in the downhill. Corinne Suter, gold in the Downhill and silver in the SuperG.
Lara Gut-Behrami also won her first gold in the Giant Slalom.
Marco Schwarz, gold in the Alpine Combined and bronze in the Giant Slalom; Alexis Pinturault, silver in the Alpine Combined; Loic Meillard, bronze in the Alpine Combined; Sebastian Foss-Solevaag, gold in the Slalom, and Henrik Kristoffersen, bronze in the Slalom, were also confirmed.
One of the biggest surprises of this event was the silver medal in the downhill by German Romed Baumann, who started with bib number 20. The athlete wrote the history of German skiing. His performance is the best result that a German athlete has ever achieved in a World Championships Super G.
Another great surprise was Katharina Liensberger, gold in the women's parallel, bronze in the giant and gold in the slalom.
Mathieu Faivre also surprised us with gold in the men's giant slalom and Adrian Pertl with silver in the men's slalom.
Big disappointment for Dominik Paris, 5 in the Super-G and 4 in the downhill. Congratulations to Innerhofer for his sixth place in the downhill.
Mikaela Shiffrin, her majesty, is always the queen of skiing, she confirms it in all specialities: gold in the Alpine combined, bronze in the SuperG, silver in the giant slalom and bronze in the slalom.
Petra Vlhova, silver in the alpine combined and silver in the slalom, and Michelle Gisin, bronze in the alpine combined, were also very good.
Our Italian Elena Curtoni also did well, fourth in the Alpine combined and eighth in the downhill.
We are sorry for Federica Brignone that it was not her World Cup, our great athlete has put her heart and crazy determination and we are sure that she will be able to redeem herself. The World Cup season is still to come and there are several races awaiting her.
Congratulations to Alex Vinatzer, who came very close to the podium with a fourth place in the slalom, but found himself again after a difficult month of January in the World Cup.
Team parallel: the favourites Austria and Switzerland were eliminated in the quarterfinals together with Italy and with great surprise we congratulate Norway (gold), Sweden (silver) and Germany (bronze).
At the World Championships there was no lack of romance and drama. After De Aliprandini's silver medal, Federico Gaspari from Cortina, one of the track managers at the World Championships, made a declaration of love and marriage proposal to his wife Annabella.
