Sometimes in sports there are natural talents, those who become so after years of training, and the predestined. On July 14, 1990, a predestined was born in Milan, Lombardy, Italy, Federica Brignone, who scored a unique victory in the history of Italian alpine skiing this February.

Federica, was born practically with skis on her feet because her dad Daniele is a ski instructor and her mom Maria Rosa Quario was a top skier who competed with the Italian national team, so she was destined to become a champion. But being a child of art does not always mean becoming a champion.

Federica not only became a star in alpine skiing but also set some records by achieving goals that no Italian female skier had ever achieved. One such record she set on February 6 of this year, winning at the World Championships in Courchevel/Méribel, France, the gold medal in the combined event (the race that includes the three events of downhill, giant slalom, and slalom), thus becoming the first Italian in history to win the world title in the specialty.

Her international career began when she was still a teenager, specifically at the age of 16 with her debut in the European Cup. At the age of 17 she competed for the first time in the World Cup, and although she failed to finish the race she had her first experience with the strongest female skiers in the world. She had her first major success at 18, winning the World Junior Championships in the combined event.

From then on she started winning medals in both youth and overall races, as happened in 2009 in Aspen (CO) with her third place in the World Cup giant slalom. Still very young, in 2010 she participated in her first Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, but did not achieve good results. In 2011, however, she showed the ski world her full strength, winning the silver medal in the giant slalom at the World Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

At just 21 years old, her career seemed doomed: she would become a true world star in alpine skiing. Instead, a year later Federica stopped for surgery, and when she returned to compete she could no longer achieve the great results of the past. But, being a great athlete, she did not give up and three years after the operation she returned to prove her full value on the international ski slopes. Indeed, on October 24, 2015, she scored her first victory in a World Cup stage, winning the giant slalom event in Sölden (Austria), and in 2017 she won for the second time in the World Cup in Aspen (CO), finishing ahead of her two national teammates Sofia Goggia and Marta Bassino. An all-Italian podium that was repeated in 2018, thanks to Federica's victory in the downhill ahead of Sofia Goggia and Nadia Fanchini.

In the same year, the Italian skier won her first Olympic medal, a bronze in the giant slalom in Pyeongchang (South Korea) 2018, and in 2020 she set another record for Italian skiing, winning the overall World Cup for the first time by 153 points over the runner-up, thanks to first place in the giant slalom and combined, second in the super-giant and third in the downhill.

Then, in 2022, came the ultimate consecration. First she achieved her seventeenth victory in a World Cup stage, becoming the most successful Italian in the history of the world's most important circuit competition, then she won two medals at the Beijing (China) Winter Olympics, silver in giant slalom and bronze in combined, and finally she won the World Cup in super-giant. An incredible career for this Italian athlete who became the queen of the snow from a young age.