Sofia Goggia and a goal beyond skiing: the Italian champion explains her choice

Champion in sports but also in front of the books: Sofia Goggia, during Tuesday’s FISI Media Day, spoke not only about her experience on skis that has brought so much satisfaction to herself and to Italian fans, but also about the path of studies she faced in parallel with her sports activity, which led her to the very recent graduation in Political Science at Luiss University in Rome.

“I was really excited at the time of discussing my three-year thesis,” revealed the Italian star athlete. It was a beautiful path, which I decided to undertake in parallel with my sporting activity even during the Olympic year: I did it because I felt the need to explore something that went beyond the boundaries of this beautiful and all-encompassing profession, to which I have dedicated my whole life.”

“Inside me,” Goggia said again, “I felt that skiing was not enough, that I needed something more. I am very happy that I had the courage to start a course of study, and I hope that many other athletes can also be inspired by my example, just as I myself have been inspired by many other colleagues, deciding to put a different path alongside their sports career. It can be done.”

Sofia Goggia is coming off an overall satisfying season: in fact, 2025-2026 gave her her fifth career specialty World Cup (the first in Super-G, a discipline in which she won her three seasonal races, after the four downhill races between 2018 and 2023), third place in the overall CdM (equaled her personal best), and bronze in the downhill at Milan Cortina 2026, her third medal in Five Circles after the gold in Pyeongchang and the silver in Beijing, again in the queen of speed races.

Despite her many commitments around the world, she also kept up her desire to earn her degree, completing her studies with a thesis in which she set the various editions of the Olympic Games as a historical-political reference point over the last century and a half.