Celina Seghi has died, farewell to skiing legend
Celina Senghi died
She passed away tonight at the age of 102 Celina Seghi, a legend of the alpine skiing world and among the greatest champions of the discipline even before the war. One of Italy’s first female alpine skiers, holder of an extraordinary palmares.
An athlete with a petite physique active in the 1940s-1950s, she was born in Abetone on March 6 and not March 8, 1920, as erroneously reported at the registry office and thus on official documents.
He obtained the first of his thirty-seven medals at the Italian Championships in 1934, just 14 years old. During the war, in 1941 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, he participated in the “World Championships” later not sanctioned by the FIS because many of Italy’s wartime adversary nations were absent; on that occasion he won the gold medal in the special slalom and the silver medal in the combined.
He also won prestigious international trophies in his career, notably the Arlberg-Kandahar. In the 1947 edition, held in Mürren, she won the downhill and the combined and placed second in the special slalom; in the 1948 edition, held in Chamonix, she won the special slalom and the combined and was third in the downhill. Thanks to these placings she received the competition’s prestigious trophy, the diamond “K.” Also in 1948 she participated in the Fifth Winter Olympic Games in Sankt Moritz 1948, where she finished 4th in the downhill, 14th in the special slalom and 4th in the combined.
In 1949 she achieved her last major placings at the Arlberg-Kandahar, finishing in Sankt Anton am Arlberg among the top six (though without making the podium) in all three of the planned specialties; the following year she won the Foemina Cup and, at the 1950 World Championships in Aspen, she won the bronze medal in the special slalom.
At the Sixth Winter Olympic Games in Oslo 1952 she was 15th in the downhill, 7th in the giant slalom and 4th in the special slalom. She won her last national title in 1954 (20 years after her first medal), in giant slalom, and continued to compete until the eve of the VII Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956.
President Flavio Roda, the entire Italian Winter Sports Federation and the entire world of mountain sports enthusiasts are close to the family in these hours of sad sorrow.
