The Italian Sofia Goggia, world No. 1 in the super-G last winter, does not yet know when she will be able to launch her season in the Alpine Ski World Cup, after a preparation strongly disrupted by two viruses, including chikungunya, she explained on Saturday evening.
“I can’t make a plan, because I need time to come out of the consequences of the viruses,” the four-time World Cup downhill winner said at an event organized by Gazzetta dello Sport.
The Italian, bronze medalist in the downhill at the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, had to cut short her training camp in South America this summer to return to Italy.
“I started to feel particularly strong, intense and strange joint pain (…) I couldn’t climb the stairs,” explained the 2018 Olympic downhill champion.
On her return to Italy, doctors finally established that she had been “bitten by an infected mosquito”: “I contracted the chikungunya virus, and in the wake of this virus, I also contracted parvovirus B19, which is a really unusual virus in adults, because it generally only affects young children, but it causes all these neurological symptoms and these severe joint pains, this feeling of great fatigue.”
“There is no treatment, I’m waiting for it to pass. I have passed the acute phase, I am in the residual phase but this leaves me with a lot of after-effects. There are days when I feel better, and others where I wake up and feel completely flat. I have to give time to time,” continued the skier with 29 World Cup victories.
The 2026-27 World Cup begins in Sölden, Austria, with a giant slalom on October 24. The highlight of the winter, the 2027 World Championships in Crans-Montana (Switzerland), will take place from February 1 to 14, 2027.
