Veronika Aigner (AUT) claimed the first gold of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games as she and guide Lilly Sammer won the Women\u2019s Vision Impaired Downhill.<\/p>\n
Aigner teamed up late with Sammer after her usual guide, elder sister Elisabeth, was ruled out of the Games with a cruciate knee ligament injury. But they gelled superbly in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo with Aigner taking victory to add to her Giant Slalom and Slalom golds from Beijing 2022.<\/p>\n
Chiara Mazzel (ITA; guide Nicola Cotti Cottini) was just 0.48 back in second to secure the hosts\u2019 first medal of the Games, with Alexandra Rexova (SVK; guide Sophia Polak) – the first skier to go down the course – taking the bronze.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the run, we knew we would be faster than in training,\u201d said Aigner. \u201cWe gave our best and the jumps were so big! But in the finish area we had so many feelings. When Chiara was outside our time, we were so happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sammer said, \u201cNow I have the best feeling ever. I enjoyed it so much. It was crazy. At the start I was very nervous, but I\u2019m so proud of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johannes Aigner followed his sister in winning gold as he retained his Downhill VI title from Beijing. Guided by Nico Haberl, he was 2.25 seconds quicker than Kalle Ericsson (CAN; guide Sierra Smith). Giacomo Bertagnolli (guide Andrea Ravelli) took bronze for Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I was very fast,\u201d said Aigner who went first as he clinched his third Paralympic gold. \u201cIt was a little bit difficult to know the time, but I thought it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veronika Aigner (AUT) claimed the first gold of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games as she and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67349,67346,42,43,67347,67348,40,38,41,39,67350],"class_list":{"0":"post-326995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-federation","9":"tag-fis","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ski","13":"tag-snowboard","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories","18":"tag-winter-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}