Latest news with #ItalianOlympic
Sydney Morning Herald
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Best air ever?' The perfect 10 commentators are hailing greatest of all time
American surfer Griffin Colapinto has described a ride which included a spectacular aerial and earned a perfect 10 score at Margaret River as one of the 'most incredible moments of my life'. Competing in the quarter-finals at the Western Australia Margaret River Pro, Colapinto rode into the wave at full speed before checking his turns and widening his stance to execute a big air. Pulling off a spring-loaded spin that went into full rotation, Colapinto landed perfectly and was awarded 10s across the board, helping him progress to the semi-finals. 'He's a magic maker, it's unscripted,' the commentators gushed. Colapinto is on course to meet his cousin, Corey Colapinto, in the final after Corey knocked out the last remaining Australian, Jacob Willcox in the last eight. Griffin Colapinto beat Italian Olympic representative Leonardo Fioravanti with a score of 16.33 to 15.73 to earn his semi-final spot. The Italian led in the first three sets, scoring 9.00 and then a 6.73 which forced Colapinto, who had delivered a 6.33 but nothing higher, to answer with a knock-out. 'It took me a while to realise that this was real life.' Griffin Colapinto 'I mean, the 10 was one of the most incredible moments of my life,' Colapinto said on an Instagram video posted by World Surf League and captioned: 'Best air ever in a comp?' 'I think when I landed it, I landed, and then it took me a while to realise that this was real life.'
The Age
26-05-2025
- Sport
- The Age
‘Best air ever?' The perfect 10 commentators are hailing greatest of all time
American surfer Griffin Colapinto has described a ride which included a spectacular aerial and earned a perfect 10 score at Margaret River as one of the 'most incredible moments of my life'. Competing in the quarter-finals at the Western Australia Margaret River Pro, Colapinto rode into the wave at full speed before checking his turns and widening his stance to execute a big air. Pulling off a spring-loaded spin that went into full rotation, Colapinto landed perfectly and was awarded 10s across the board, helping him progress to the semi-finals. 'He's a magic maker, it's unscripted,' the commentators gushed. Colapinto is on course to meet his cousin, Corey Colapinto, in the final after Corey knocked out the last remaining Australian, Jacob Willcox in the last eight. Griffin Colapinto beat Italian Olympic representative Leonardo Fioravanti with a score of 16.33 to 15.73 to earn his semi-final spot. The Italian led in the first three sets, scoring 9.00 and then a 6.73 which forced Colapinto, who had delivered a 6.33 but nothing higher, to answer with a knock-out. 'It took me a while to realise that this was real life.' Griffin Colapinto 'I mean, the 10 was one of the most incredible moments of my life,' Colapinto said on an Instagram video posted by World Surf League and captioned: 'Best air ever in a comp?' 'I think when I landed it, I landed, and then it took me a while to realise that this was real life.'
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Could the United States host Milano Cortina Winter Olympic events next year?
Construction work takes place at the Cortina Sliding Center, venue for the bob, luge and skeleton disciplines at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) The 2026 Winter Games will begin in just over 10 months in the Milan-Cortino region of northern Italy. But it's possible a few events might take place a whole lot closer to Americans' home — in Lake Placid, New York. Advertisement Most of the venues slated to host the 2026 Winter Games' 116 events across 16 disciplines are either already constructed or slated to be completed well in advance of the Games. The chief exception: the Cortina d'Ampezzo Eugenio Monti Sliding Centre, prospective host site for bobsled, skeleton and luge. With less than a year before the Games begin, the sliding center has not yet received final approval from the International Olympic Committee to host competitions. Built in the 1920s and named for an Italian Olympic hero, the Eugenio Monti center has hosted significant sliding events for decades, but required considerable upgrades in order to meet current Olympic sliding standards. Italian Olympic officials rejected calls from the IOC to move the sliding events to nearby venues in Austria or Switzerland, instead opting to upgrade its own existing facility. In just under a year, and at a cost of more than €118 million, the Società Infrastrutture Milano Cortina 2026 (SIMICO), a public company managed by the Italian government, has engineered the construction of a 1,730-meter, 16-turn track roughly following the original track's layout. While safety is a paramount consideration for any Olympic venue, sliding sports have a particular vested interest given the fatalities that have occurred during sliding events. In 2010, for instance, just before the start of the Vancouver Olympics, luger Nodar Kumaritashvili of the nation of Georgia died when he lost control of his luge and was ejected from the track, colliding with an unpadded support pole. Advertisement The Cortina sliding center's readiness has been such a question that Olympic organizers have reached out to Lake Placid, host of the 1980 Games, about the possibility of hosting sliding events. Unlike many — perhaps even most — Olympic facilities, which slide into disrepair and ruin shortly after the torch is snuffed and the world leaves town, Lake Placid has maintained its sliding center as one of the world's finest bobsled and luge facilities. 'We are still in a holding pattern on whether we will be activated,' Darcy Norfolk, Lake Placid Olympic Regional Development Authority communications director, told Yahoo Sports in an email. 'Should we be needed, we are here to support the sliding athletes and provide an Olympic experience from competition to celebration.' Norfolk noted that Lake Placid 'continues to be hopeful' that the Eugenio Monti facility is prepared in time 'to ensure the sliding sports are held in Italy.' Just one year ago, the abandoned Eugenio Monti Olympic sliding track was covered in snow. (Photo by Vittorio) (Vittorio Zunino Celotto via Getty Images) There's precedent for staging Olympic events far from the host country; last year, Paris Olympic organizers held surfing events in Tahiti, since there's little quality surfing on the Seine River. However, speaking of the Seine, there's also precedent for Olympic events running right up to the absolute go or no-go edge of deadlines. Paris Olympic organizers battled contamination in the Seine for months in preparation for staging triathlon and marathon swimming events there, finally completing the swimming events even after several in-Games delays. Advertisement So it's possible, even likely, that Lake Placid's dreams of hosting another Olympic event in 2026 will soon vanish. Over the past week, the Cortina track has conducted tests of bobsled and luge runs in coordination with the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) and the International Luge Federation (FIL). Sixty athletes from 11 countries all over the world performed 176 runs, and members of both federations have expressed satisfaction with the results of the initial certification testing, or 'homologation,' as it's known in sliding circles. "It is just fantastic to see our track for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games taking such good shape,' IBSF President Ivo Ferriani said in a statement. 'We all know that the timeframe for the re-construction was very tight and ambitious, but SiMiCo has done an amazing job.' 'The diverse group of athletes, coaches and from various countries have put this newly reconstructed track to the test and were very happy with it. The athletes can't wait to compete at the Olympic Winter Games next February,' FIL General Secretary Dwight Bell said in a statement on Saturday. 'See you in Cortina in February of 2026!" Final approval will rest with the IOC, but the verdicts of the two sport federations will carry substantial weight. The track is scheduled to be completed by Nov. 5, with various luge, bobsled and skeleton events and training slated to start soon afterward. The Milan-Cortina Olympics are scheduled to begin on Feb. 6, 2026, although a roof and support facilities still need to be constructed to prepare the Eugenio Monti facility for its Olympic spotlight. Advertisement Sliding tracks are, by their very nature, expensive to construct and maintain; there are few in the world that meet the highest standards of competition. The intention on the part of all involved is to make the Eugenio Monti track a significant stop for sliding events in the foreseeable future. 'The sliding track in Cortina will become a fixed part of the IBSF calendar planning post-Games, and we have already worked on a multi-year plan for our events and training camps at this track,' IBSF officials told Yahoo Sports in a statement. 'This track has always been popular as a training and competition venue for teams coming from across the globe and we are convinced this will also be the case in the future.' If the IOC opts to keep the sliding events in Italy, the United States as a country won't have long to wait for more Olympic events — Los Angeles is scheduled to host the Summer Games in 2028, and the 2034 Winter Olympics will take place in Salt Lake City.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Mikaela Shiffrin, fellow ski racers, clear mental hurdles after traumatic injury at their own speed
SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — From a physical standpoint, Mikaela Shiffrin is back to her winning form after a serious crash. From a mental standpoint, there remains work to be done. That's why Shiffrin sat out the giant slalom event Thursday at the world championships two days after taking gold in the team combined event. The two-time Olympic champion revealed she's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a fall in a giant slalom race on Nov. 30 in Killington, Vermont, where something punctured her side and caused severe trauma to her oblique muscles. She's just not ready to tackle the GS yet. There's no concrete roadmap when it comes to getting over an emotional hurdle — or a definitive timeline. Each ski racer processes a traumatic event — whether it results in a torn ACL, severe laceration, back injury or broken bone — at their own speed. 'Because when you go through a trauma event and that part of your brain gets shut down, it can't make sense of what happened. So your brain is left with this puzzle memory of, 'Whoa, what happened there?'' explained Ben Foodman, a psychotherapist and performance specialist who has no ties with Shiffrin but has worked with professional race car drivers, Major League Baseball players, Olympians, NFL players and PGA golfers to help them navigate mental health concerns. 'If you're not gentle and you're not going at a pace that they can tolerate, then sometimes what can happen is they can feel like they're right back in that experience,' Foodman added. Italian Olympic champion Sofia Goggia knows the feeling. She was returning from a serious knee injury and was gripped by anxiety as she trained on the glacier in Soelden, Austria, three months ago. 'I was full of fear,' Goggia said. 'But then when I went to Copper Mountain (Colorado) and started training downhill again, I was fine after 10 days and realized that I was fast again.' In Shiffrin's case, the slalom didn't invoke the fear factor like the giant slalom, which is typically a faster race. So she competed in the slalom portion of the team combined event as Breezy Johnson took care of the downhill portion. They won ,and Shiffrin, winner of 99 World Cup events, looked every bit like her old self. But the trauma from her GS crash still lingers. Whatever pierced her that day when she fell nearly punctured her abdominal wall and her colon. Shiffrin was "a millimeter from pretty catastrophic,' she said. In her return to on-snow training, Shiffrin experienced a similar situation as when she fell. But she stayed on her skis and thought it might be a remedy to expel her fear. It wasn't that simple. 'Once you get on snow, you're thinking then it's going to be fun, and then my passion is going to outweigh any hard things and it's going to (be) step-by-step and we're just going to get there,' Shiffrin said. 'But there's so many variables to skiing that it's just not that easy. "Like, I'm supposed to dive into this turn, no holds barred, but I'm just supposed to do it and I don't want to do it. I don't want to put my skis on edge. That's scary, and it takes time.' To give an illustration of the brain's vast complexity, Foodman explained that all the neurons and synaptic connections are like filling eight Olympic-sized swimming pools with grains of sand — with each grain representing one connection. 'If you're going to stay in sports ... you're going to constantly, voluntarily experience stress tests," Foodman said. 'The more you surround yourself with that kind of stress, the more likely it is that you're going to re-experience some unwanted things." For Johnson, there were struggles in her return from a second knee injury. 'When you're not skiing, you think about all the fun parts of skiing and you're like, 'I miss this so much,'" said Johnson, who won the downhill at the world championships last weekend. 'And then you get back to it and you remember also all the hard parts of skiing. 'The thing that I know having been through it three different times, is that every time is different and every person is different.' Two-time Olympic champion Ted Ligety dealt with back issues over his career. He sometimes knew going into a race that certain sections of a course would cause him immense discomfort and a particularly risky run could mean days of recovery. 'I was pretty good at clearing my mind and executing and doing what I already knew how to do,' said Ligety, the retired ski racer who won five gold medals at world championships. 'It's hard to find that balance of being cognizant of (an injury) so you can protect it and also letting yourself ski free.' Lindsey Vonn, who returned this season after nearly six years of retirement, shares a similar sentiment. 'I have always kind of approached crashing the same way: It happened. I can't change it. I watch my video. I learn what I did wrong, what I could have maybe done better, and I move forward,' Vonn explained. 'The easiest way for me to get over a crash is just to keep skiing. Like I fell off a horse and I got back on the exact same horse three weeks later. That's just how I process things." Every ski racer recovers in a different way and on a different path. 'You want to become more comfortable with the discomfort," said Foodman, who recommends the book, 'The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,' by Bessel van der Kolk to athletes he counsels. "Instead of trying to ignore those feelings, let's fully feel those feelings. Let's explore the depth of those feelings and get you comfortable with that.' ___ Graham contributed from Denver. ___ AP skiing: Andrew Dampf And Pat Graham, The Associated Press
Al Arabiya
13-02-2025
- Sport
- Al Arabiya
Mikaela Shiffrin, fellow ski racers, clear mental hurdles after traumatic injury at their own speed
From a physical standpoint, Mikaela Shiffrin is back to her winning form after a serious crash. From a mental standpoint, there remains work to be done. That's why Shiffrin sat out the giant slalom event Thursday at the world championships, two days after taking gold in the team combined event. The two-time Olympic champion revealed she's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a fall in a giant slalom race on Nov. 30 in Killington, Vermont, where something punctured her side and caused severe trauma to her oblique muscles. She's just not ready to tackle the GS yet. There's no concrete roadmap when it comes to getting over an emotional hurdle – or a definitive timeline. Each ski racer processes a traumatic event – whether it results in a torn ACL, severe laceration, back injury, or broken bone – at their own speed. 'Because when you go through a trauma event and that part of your brain gets shut down, it can't make sense of what happened. So your brain is left with this puzzle memory of 'Whoa, what happened there?'' explained Ben Foodman, a psychotherapist and performance specialist who has no ties with Shiffrin but has worked with professional race car drivers, Major League Baseball players, Olympians, NFL players, and PGA golfers to help them navigate mental health concerns. 'If you're not gentle and you're not going at a pace that they can tolerate, then sometimes what can happen is they can feel like they're right back in that experience,' Foodman added. Italian Olympic champion Sofia Goggia knows the feeling. She was returning from a serious knee injury and was gripped by anxiety as she trained on the glacier in Soelden, Austria, three months ago. 'I was full of fear,' Goggia said. 'But then when I went to Copper Mountain (Colorado) and started training downhill again, I was fine after 10 days and realized that I was fast again.' In Shiffrin's case, the slalom didn't invoke the fear factor like the giant slalom, which is typically a faster race. So she competed in the slalom portion of the team combined event as Breezy Johnson took care of the downhill portion. They won, and Shiffrin, winner of 99 World Cup events, looked every bit like her old self. But the trauma from her GS crash still lingers. Whatever pierced her that day when she fell nearly punctured her abdominal wall and her colon. Shiffrin was 'a millimeter from pretty catastrophic,' she said. In her return to on-snow training, Shiffrin experienced a similar situation as when she fell. But she stayed on her skis and thought it might be a remedy to expel her fear. It wasn't that simple. 'Once you get on snow you're thinking then it's going to be fun and then my passion is going to outweigh any hard things and it's going to (be) step-by-step and we're just going to get there,' Shiffrin said. 'But there's so many variables to skiing that it's just not that easy. Like I'm supposed to dive into this turn, no holds barred, but I'm just supposed to do it and I don't want to do it. I don't want to put my skis on edge. That's scary and it takes time.' To give an illustration of the brain's vast complexity, Foodman explained that all the neurons and synaptic connections are like filling eight Olympic-sized swimming pools with grains of sand – with each grain representing one connection. 'If you're going to stay in sports … you're going to constantly voluntarily experience stress tests,' Foodman said. 'The more you surround yourself with that kind of stress, the more likely it is that you're going to re-experience some unwanted things.' For Johnson, there were struggles in her return from a second knee injury. 'When you're not skiing you think about all the fun parts of skiing and you're like 'I miss this so much,'' said Johnson, who won the downhill at the world championships last weekend. 'And then you get back to it and you remember also all the hard parts of skiing. The thing that I know having been through it three different times is that every time is different and every person is different.' Two-time Olympic champion Ted Ligety dealt with back issues over his career. He sometimes knew going into a race that certain sections of a course would cause him immense discomfort and a particularly risky run could mean days of recovery. 'I was pretty good at clearing my mind and executing and doing what I already knew how to do,' said Ligety, the retired ski racer who won five gold medals at world championships. 'It's hard to find that balance of being cognizant of (an injury) so you can protect it and also letting yourself ski free.' Lindsey Vonn, who returned this season after nearly six years of retirement, shares a similar sentiment. 'I have always kind of approached crashing the same way: It happened. I can't change it. I watch my video. I learn what I did wrong, what I could have maybe done better and I move forward,' Vonn explained. 'The easiest way for me to get over a crash is just to keep skiing. Like I fell off a horse and I got back on the exact same horse three weeks later. That's just how I process things.' Every ski racer recovers in a different way and on a different path. 'You want to become more comfortable with the discomfort,' said Foodman, who recommends the book 'The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma' by Bessel van der Kolk to athletes he counsels. 'Instead of trying to ignore those feelings, let's fully feel those feelings. Let's explore the depth of those feelings and get you comfortable with that.'
