Milan Cortina 2026, comes another painful forfeit

Another painful forfeit for the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Games, and once again it is a Swiss skier. Marco Kohler, who had reached the necessary minimums for the downhill, was injured at the worst time of the season, and that is when the countdown to the Five Circles event, which will kick off on Feb. 6, with the opening ceremony scheduled at the Meazza Stadium, and close on the 22nd of the same month, has already largely begun.

Aldo Seghedoni

Kohler announced this Monday on his socials that he suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during last Saturday’s Kitzbühel downhill. “This diagnosis is a hard blow, both mentally and emotionally – he admitted -The path I will have to take to return will not be easy, but giving up was never an option.”

The 28-year-old from Meiringen, Canton Bern, who has obviously ended his season, will undergo surgery in the coming days. And, unfortunately for him, it will not be the first time he has gone under the knife. In 2024 he had already ruptured the cruciate ligament in his right knee in the downhill in Wengen, while in 2020 he suffered the same injury in his left knee.

Kohler’s best World Cup results of the season were an 11th place in the Livigno Super-G and another 11th in the Val Gardena downhill.

On Saturday Giovanni Franzoni rightfully entered the legend of Italian alpine skiing by imposing himself in the Kitzbühel free race on the legendary Streif. The Brescian in one of the absolute temples of speed thus achieved the first career success in the specialty and the second overall in the World Cup. It was a result that brought Italy back to the top step of the podium in Kitzbühel seven years since’the last time, that is, after Dominik Paris’s 2019 victory.

In November, concerns were unfortunately well-founded after Lara Gut-Behrami suffered an injury at Copper Mountain (Colorado): the Swiss athlete suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament, as well as a meniscal injury in her left knee, and in turn had to forgo competing at the Olympics.