When the starting gate opens at Cortina's Tofana course this morning, it will feel less like a ski race and more like a national referendum. Federica Brignone, already this Games' super-G champion, and Sofia Goggia, the speed demon reinvented as a technical skier, will race in front of a crowd that has waited seven decades to cheer Italian alpine skiing on home snow.
Brignone arrives as the form skier. Her super-G gold was clinical, and she has been the most consistent woman in giant slalom all season, winning three World Cup races since December. Goggia's presence in the GS itself is the story: a downhill specialist who remade her technique to compete across disciplines, she has a point to prove after finishing agonisingly 4th in Beijing's GS.
But this is not a two-horse race. Sweden's Sara Hector, the defending Olympic champion, remains dangerous. Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami is lurking. And the USA's Mikaela Shiffrin, if racing, brings unmatched experience. Gazzetta dello Sport has run daily countdown features. The Cortina faithful will be loud.
Yesterday's men's GS delivered an astonishing result when Lucas Pinheiro Braathen won gold for Brazil, the first Winter Olympics medal for any South American nation. Odermatt took silver (+0.58s), continuing his agonising near-miss pattern at these Games: four races, four medals, zero golds.