Brignone, Goggia and Bassino: three completely different build-ups to Sölden (and the season)

The build-up to Sölden is completely different for a thousand reasons, with several question marks, especially after what emerged over the weekend regarding Sofia Goggia.

Let’s analyse the current situation of the three women who, over the past decade, have made history for the women’s national team, starting with Federica Brignone, who is now almost three weeks removed from the surgery in Milan to remove the fixation hardware from her left leg. There is confidence surrounding the champion from La Salle, who, after several days at Turin’s J Medical, moved to South Tyrol for a couple of days of relaxation with her close friends and former national-team teammates, Karoline Pichler and Lisa Magdalena Agerer.

The work continues, and by the end of the month we will understand when the reigning Olympic giant slalom and super-G champion will truly be able to return to the snow.

Then there is the Goggia situation, which has become much more complicated to understand over the past 48 hours when it comes to the immediate future of the queen of the last Super-G World Cup: her early return from South America, where after Ushuaia (where Elena Curtoni and Laura Pirovano continue their work) she was supposed to fly to La Parva for the speed block on the Chilean snow, came as a surprise to everyone. Moreover, until the middle of last week, things had appeared to be going very well for Sofia’s giant slalom training.

Today, colleague Flavio Vanetti discussed the various hypotheses surrounding the malaise that led the Italian star to return home to undergo a series of tests: hantavirus now appears unlikely and, since this was not a “medical episode” or a traumatic event, as Gianluca Rulfi also immediately clarified, it is clear that the range of possibilities may be extremely broad. The Corriere della Sera journalist analysed how this malaise may be more of a kind of mental downturn, also considering all the changes Goggia has absorbed in recent months, from her coach (with Rulfi replacing Agazzi) to her ski technician, as well as no longer working with the psychiatrist she collaborated with for several years.

The good news, meanwhile, concerns Marta Bassino: Gianmario Bonzi, Eurosport’s voice of women’s skiing and the founder of the sporttales.it portal, reported the details revealed by the national team’s technical director in an article on his website (HERE you can read the report). Yes, because Rulfi explained that “we are entering race mode and it is already time to push. Marta is keeping pace, which means everything is going in the right direction”.

He added that, in a giant slalom run, the times of the racer from Cuneo, winner of the crystal globe in the discipline in 2021, remain around half a second behind Sara Hector, who is clearly the fastest, and close to those of Camille Rast. “Hector is like Brignone; she is not someone who bluffs and always gives her best, even in training,” the Piedmontese coach continued in the interview. “Marta is close to a Rast, for example, who also won a giant slalom last season.

You can see that there is still a technical, confidence and equipment-adaptation gap to close, but for now things are going well; last year she immediately developed a good feeling with the new equipment and, just when things were looking best, she got injured”.

Bassino, in fact, has not raced since March 2025, when she finished very strongly in the super-G at the Sun Valley finals. She then switched to HEAD and, judging by various indications, things had already gone very well with the Austrian brand last summer, before the crash in mid-October in Val Senales, just a few days before Sölden. From the Rettenbach, on 24 October, the second phase of her career will begin.