Lara Della Mea: 'Determination and awareness keys to top-level sport'

It only takes 10 hundredths of a second to blink once. Lara Della Mea, 27, from Tarvisio in Friuli, lost the bronze medal in the giant slal at the Milan Cortina Games by five hundredths. Not even a blink. And yet, she knows how to be positive: 'I was 15th after the first run, but there were a few hundredths compared to the fourth time and I said to myself: Lara, it's now or never, play it 100%. And so I did, I made a mistake on the first bump, but otherwise it was the best race of my life'. On the podium was Federica Brignone and, tied in silver, Hector and Stjernesund. But Lara did not slip on regrets and retains that thrill of glory and the embrace of Tina Maze.

The memory is as sweet as it was that of Benedetta Pilato, fourth in the 100 breaststroke in Paris 2024, and as happy. Since that day, Italian sports culture, nurtured by so many painful fourth places (from Vanessa Ferrari to Tania Cagnotto) has grown and President Sergio Mattarella will receive all the medallists and fourth-place finishers at the Quirinale on 8 April: 'Still emotions, it is as if the Games, which have made me grow and leave me with so much experience for the future, never end,' Lara confesses, in her serene voice from her home in Tarvisio. It was in Val Canale that she started skiing with her father Michele: 'I just cross the road and I am on the slope. The snow, the Jôf di Montasio, the Mangart, the Lussari are my mountains, this is home and I feel good here'.

Just a few more days, perhaps with a plate of frico, and we're off again for the last four races of the season. 'We're on the road 11 months of the year, if you don't love the sport madly, if you don't enjoy every downhill run, you can't accept all these sacrifices and hardships. Intense training, endless retreats, the risk of injury: 'For me, coming back after my cruciate rupture in 2021 was the biggest challenge. Surgery, long rehabilitation, the thousand questions about coming back, about being able to stay competitive. But you have to believe in it: 'These years of competing have taught me that determination, hard work, and self-awareness are the real fuel: in competition, you are alone with your abilities. And with your desire to compete: 'Even when I was a child, I enjoyed competing, coming down, coming down and triumphing. Pure adrenalin then as now'. Then there is the immensity of nature: 'I also love skiing because it is pure nature, it is being alone in the immensity and dominating it with movement, with the body. No other sport has this charge of freedom and, if I then ski down my mountains, I am really happy". What more could you want? Perhaps a walk to the Fusine Lakes thinking back to 15 February 2026 and being able to smile because life is a thrill full of the future.