Three-time Olympic medalist Federica Brignone keeps getting better with age

Federica Brignone still remembers the best Christmas present she ever received: a pair of Rossignol skis with a green dragon plastered to each tip.

The Italian superstar has been smiling ever since she strapped her 2-year-old self in on a minus 15-degree day. She sent it while her mom — a former ski racer herself — watched from the top of a small hill and her dad waited in the road below.

“I already loved speed,” Brignone said. Nothing has changed 32 years later. In fact, the three-time Olympic medalist only seems to get better with age.

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Across 18 World Cup seasons, Brignone has captured 28 wins and 70 podiums. In 2020, she swept the GS, Alpine combined and overall titles and in 2022 she won the super-G globe. The 2023 season saw her steal the super-G world championship gold while last year featured a career-best 13 podiums en route to a second place overall standings finish. She launched her 2024-25 campaign in style, becoming the oldest woman to win a World Cup race with her GS victory in Solden, Austria, on Oct. 26.

This week, the 34-year-old checked off another item on her skiing bucket list.

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“Birds of Prey was always one of my dreams, to race here. It’s one of the men’s downhill that you see on TV and say, ‘OK, I would race here,'” she said after Tuesday’s training run. “It’s steep, there’s a lot of turns, there’s speed, there’s flow also and the snow is not like in Kitzbuehl and really icy. … It was even better than I thought.”

Nine years ago, Beaver Creek was where Brignone realized how difficult the path to the top of World Cup truly is.

Brignone’s big breakthrough

When Brignone’s family moved to the Aosta Valley region of northwestern Italy, 6-year-old Federica enrolled in the Courmayeur Ski Club. She won her first race a year later. Even though her parents were both very connected to the ski industry — her dad was a coach and her mom, Maria Rosa Quario, made two Olympic teams and won four World Cup races over an eight-year career — Brignone said neither were helicopter parents.

“Because I wanted to do it by myself,” Brignone said. “Like say, ‘that’s me, it’s not her.'”

In fact, even when her parents felt Brignone’s coaches were doing things wrong, they didn’t step in.

“He never stayed on me and ‘oh you have to do this, this, this,'” Brignone said of her dad, Daniele, before adding that both parents were somewhat intentional in letting mistakes happen in order to spur growth. “So, I made some mistakes, but I think I’m still here because I moved on and I tried solutions and it was really nice. I really have to thank my parents.”

Brignone said her big break came when she won her first Italian junior championship as a teenager. Up to that point, she’d participated in several other sports and considered herself only regionally relevant in skiing — a sport she was mostly doing for fun.

“From there on, I kind of dedicated myself a bit more,” she said. Skiing became more than a social pastime, her approach more professional. It quickly paid off: Brignone snagged a silver medal in the GS in her world championship debut in 2011. But four years later, she was just 19th in the slalom and posted a DNF in the GS.

That visit to Beaver Creek served as another big turning point.

 “I kind of changed again,” Brignone said. “I had an injury, I made some mistakes in my career … I made some choices in my life that made me become what I am right now. So, I’m really proud.”

Brignone’s epiphany included the realization that she could only live with herself if she went all in on pursuing her full potential.

“I said, ‘OK, now I make all good choices, and if it doesn’t work, I did everything — so I accept,'” she stated. “But my life, not only my ski career, in my life it was like that: you give 100% and then you can say, OK I’m done.”

Coming into the weekend, Brignone has accomplished almost everything a World Cup skier could ask for. But her resume has one noticeable hole: a downhill victory. Could Beaver Creek be the site of some more magic?

“This is one of my goals,” the seven-time downhill podium finisher said. “I’m not going to get crazy if I don’t, but this is kind of something that I would like to achieve before the end of my career.”