Olympic stars and Italian teammates Brignone, Goggia the women to beat at alpine worlds
Federica Brignone and Sofia Goggia.
Or Sofia Goggia and Federica Brignone.
The two Italian skiers have been enjoying so much success lately that often it's just been a question of which one of them finishes ahead of the other.
Like when Brignone finished a mere 1-100th of a second ahead of Goggia to win the final World Cup downhill before the world championships.
Or when Goggia and Brignone swept the official test events for next year's Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy by winning a downhill and a super-G, respectively, on back-to-back days last month.
The alpine skiing world championships opened with Italy winning the parallel team event on Tuesday in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria and now Brignone and Goggia are among the favourites in almost all the upcoming women's events, starting with Thursday's super-G and moving on to the downhill on Saturday.
Goggia and Brignone might also join forces for the new team combined event next week, which entails one racer competing in downhill and another in slalom. The times from the two racers are then added together to determine the results. Goggia would race downhill and Brignone would race slalom, even though slalom is Brignone's weakest event.
First, though, there are the individual speed events and Brignone, who has been on the podium in the last seven races she's completed, has a simple approach.
"I will try just to do my skiing and my best and what I've been doing all winter and not to change anything," she said.
WATCH | Italy collects 1st medal of alpine worlds in Austria in mixed team parallel:
Italy defeats Switzerland to win team parallel world championship gold
In all, of the 15 races Brignone has entered this season, she's been on the podium eight times; winning