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| Sofia Goggia became an Olympic champion in 2018 |
Goggia, who became an Olympic champion for the first time when she took the women's downhill gold at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, suffered damaged anterior cruciate ligaments in her left knee and fractured her fibula in a World Cup race at Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy last month.
"I'm a little sorry about (not winning) the gold medal, but I could not do more than this,” she told reporters after taking the silver medal, her time just 16 hundredths of a second behind Switzerland's Corinne Suter.
"I'm really happy with the way I skied,” she added. “It's a fairy tale that I managed to make real because, after the injury at Cortina, it seemed like a dream that had gone up in smoke.
"I thank the doctors who told me that, if I really believed, I could do it and took the responsibility of letting me race.”
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| Michela Moiola receives an honour from Italy president Sergio Mattarella after her 2018 win |
They included the grandmother of her friend and Italy teammate, 26-year-old Michela Moioli, who comes from Alzano Lombardo, just outside Bergamo.
Moioli, who was the women’s snowboard cross champion at the Pyeongchang Games, replaced Goggia as Italy’s flag bearer at the opening ceremony in Beijing.
Unfortunately, her title defence also ended in disappointment when she was eliminated at the semi-final stage of the snowboard cross event.
(Portrait photo of Sofia Goggia by Vale93b via Wikipedia Commons)