Dreaming of a treble and in the meantime enjoying a masterpiece victory, the number 26 of your career. Here is Federica Brignone’s Saturday, in the village of Are, in a two-faced giant that leaves all hope open to those who open the gate of emotions. The first run was grey, windy and over a minute long; sun, spring snow and sprint times for the second, shortened by about ten seconds. Brignone is third halfway through the race: certainly not for smiling, given that her place of honor is the minimum she is chasing in all disciplines this season: giant slalom, super-G, overall. «In the first heat I wasn’t so happy because I didn’t have great confidence – said Brignone – Then everything went well for me, because I found a confidence that makes me very proud». In fact, at the restart the Aosta Valley girl really went wild and, after some extreme bends, danced, to lose everyone, starting from Sara Hector who was hoping for a coup in front of the home crowd and, instead, finished second (33/100), just relegating off the podium Marta Bassino, fourth, with her season best among the wide gates.
The rest of the race is all a super challenge between those that the White circus had tried to define as the seniors of the Cup. Lara Gut Behrami is third at 40/100 which gives a foretaste of the direct clashes of the finals scheduled in Saalbach next week. Brignone achieved her 11th giant slalom, eleventh podium in a season where she won 3 races between the wide gates, 2 super-Gs and collected another 6 podiums. A winning eleven, just like in 2020 when she won the overall. Even then she succeeded in Are, where, however, the pandemic took away the pleasure of running the final tests. Even then, Mikaela Shiffrin, out of action for a few weeks, was ready to return, as she will do today. The issue is between Fede and Lara divided by the rankings and united by the fate of the best. Gut dominates in the giant slalom with 95 points over Fede. In super-G Gut leads with 540 points on Cornelia Huetter’s 471 and Brignone’s 466. Here anything can happen, even if the most symbolic challenge is to defend second place overall where the Swiss always lead with the elusive 1654 points behind which Brignone stands out at 1368, on Shiffrin’s 1209 who however will only do the two slaloms, today’s one (TV 10.30 and 13.30), while Brignone will be multi-purpose, including the slalom: «I would like a placing in the top ten also between the poles: I do it to have fun». And why not to dream of an ever closer treble.
