Valentin Giraud Moine, the post-Garmisch miracle man, says enough: "It's hard to say goodbye to skiing"

The transalpine sprinter made his retirement official: the dramatic injury in Bavaria in January 2017 destroyed his career, but "Valou" was able to return to the World Cup and also win the European Cup.

Wednesday 8 September 2021 3 minutes reading time

A special boy, capable of emerging from a sporting and human drama, consummated in the final stretch of that crazy descent of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, on January 27, 2017. The story of Valentin Giraud Moine changed dramatically that day, with devastating fractures to both legs, nerve injuries and the doubt that he could even walk again, for a fall that came just six days after the most beautiful joy, when a sprinter in great ascent like the 25-year-old transalpine, finished in second place the descent on the Streif of Kitzbuehel, behind only King Dominik Paris. Today, at 29, the big boy from Orcières said enough and that feat in the symbolic race will remain his only podium in CdM, given that the second career of "Valou" was clearly conditioned by what happened in Bavaria: he returned to Lake Louise after almost two years, in points for the first time in the combined Wengen (January 2019), 24th, but again at the top in the first two months of 2020, with three podiums in series in the European Cup (and the conquest of the fixed place for the subsequent CdM) and the victory in the descent of Kvitfjell. The growth continued in 2020/21, so much so that at his seasonal debut in the maximum circuit in Val d''Isère, he reached a great 14th place in his discipline, on the Oreiller-Killy where he could express all his sensitivity of exceptional slipper. Giraud-Moine had to stop at the end of December after a fall in Bormio, losing the following classics due to an injury to the vast medial of the left knee, but he managed to return for the season finale, even if he failed to score points in the last descent of March in Saalbach.

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