Sawt Falasteen - Home hope Goggia on medal mission at Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics

Downhill champion at the 2018 Games and silver medallist in the same discipline four years ago, Goggia will be one of the main contenders for gold in Cortina d'Ampezzo even though so far she is having a low-key season by her standards.

The 33-year-old is yet to win a downhill race this season but over her career has triumphed in the discipline four times on the Olimpia delle Tofane piste, more than on any other slope.

And the skier from Bergamo told AFP in an interview that she will be totally focused on her endeavour to the exclusion of all else in northern Italy.

"I'm sure it's nice to have exchanges with other athletes from all over the world, but that's never interested me. I'm not here to chat. I just walk around with my noise-cancelling headphones on," she explained.

"What matters is being focused on myself, in my own silent space, because my mission is to ski as fast as possible and win a medal."

Goggia has already achieved what she dreamed of as a young girl growing up in the foothills of the Alps, becoming a four-time World Cup champion in downhill and one of the faces of Italian sport due to her Olympic heroics.

Her triumph in Pyeongchang was a landmark result for Italy, the country's first Olympic gold in alpine skiing's premier event since 1952.

"It was great day. I managed to experience my dream without letting the pressure get to me, I hope it's the same in Cortina," she said.

"I was also fascinated by the Olympic rings, I used to draw them everywhere, all the time."

It was the Olympic rings, she says, that pushed her on to claim silver at the Beijing Games despite suffering a minor leg fracture and partial ACL tear at Cortina little more than three weeks before the downhill contest.

"It clicked for me, I knew why I was there," said Goggia.

- 'Given a kicking' -

She finished just 0.16 seconds short of Switzerland's Corinne Suter and let out a scream of relief in the finish area in Yanqing.

"Even though I knew immediately that it wasn't enough to win gold, it was a cry that said 'I've achieved something incredible'. It hadn't been easy to keep the faith," said Goggia, who has undergone surgery no fewer than nine times due to injury.

"I'm probably one of the skiers who's been most given a kicking, tortured even, but it's something that I accept."

Multiple fractures in her right leg during a giant slalom training session in Ponte di Legno two years ago left her thinking she "no longer had the strength to get back up".

"Before then I'd always looked at injuries as a challenge, but that one was the hardest to deal with because it was so complicated."

But a chat with Italian football icon Roberto Baggio, who converted to Buddhism in order to deal with repeated knee injuries, and a another operation to remove the plates and screws that caused her pain while skiing, put her back on track.

Goggia is Italy's main medal hope in the women's alpine events with flag bearer Federica Brignone, the reigning World Cup holder and giant slalom world champion, on her way back from a double leg break suffered just after the end of last season.

Two-time world champion Marta Bassino was ruled out of the Milan-Cortina Games with a broken leg suffered in training in October, damaging Italy's hopes of winning 19 medals at the winter sports showpiece.

K.AbuDahab--SF-PST