Italian skiing is in mourning. At the age of 37, Elena Fanchini, the former alpine skier for the Italian national team who had been battling cancer in recent years, died on Wednesday. Elena Fanchini had however managed to recover from the tumor which had struck her for the first time in 2017. She then retired from sport in 2020.
But a recurrence occurred last summer and was therefore fatal. She was the eldest of the three Fanchini sisters (Nadia and Sabrina), all protagonists in the recent history of Italian alpine skiing. Elena Fanchini had won a silver medal at the world championships in 2005 in downhill in Bormio, as well as two victories in the World Cup, always in the same specialty (Lake Louise 2005 and Cortina d’Ampezzo 2015). She died in her house in Solato, in the province of Brescia.
This season, Sofia Goggia, the Olympic downhill champion in 2018 and silver medalist in 2022, dedicated her victory in Cortina d’Ampezzo to Elena Fanchini “who is going through a very complicated moment ».