“Many believed that I would feel extremely bad”
Tanno dares her comeback after double Olympic bad luck
Just over a year ago, Giulia Tanno (24) missed the Olympics again due to injury. Why it didn’t break her – and why she’s only now returning to Laax, despite having been good for months.
Published: 12 minutes ago
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Updated: 9 minutes ago
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Giulia Tanno is back: she is making her comeback at the Laax Open.
Marco Pescioreporter sports
It was one of the most emotional moments of the last Winter Olympics in Beijing when the newly crowned slopestyle Olympic champion Mathilde Gremaud (22) said to the camera during an SRF interview: “Giulia, I miss you, this is for you!”
When she said Giulia, Greamaud was of course referring to her teammate Giulia Tanno, who was unable to travel to China because she had had unbelievable bad luck again. For the second time in a row, the Grisons missed the Olympics due to injury. In 2018 it was a broken upper arm, this time a cruciate ligament tear, that shattered her dreams. Just before the start of the Winter Games in Beijing. “It was very difficult to accept that,” says the 24-year-old in retrospect.
Immediately after the injury, she wrote on Instagram at the time: “Sometimes it’s hard to understand why some things happen in life.” What helped her back then was that she was taken care of by those around her. And also the great support in the team. Gremaud’s words on TV made her cry at home: “It was very touching, super sweet, very emotional.”
But Tanno also says: “This time I digested the setback faster than the people around me. Many believed that I would be extremely bad. That was the case. But at some point you just have to flip the switch.”
«Fitter than before»
The fighter in her never let her give up – and pushed her through the tedious rehab. The overall Big Air World Cup winner from 2019/20 has been on the gas so much that her progress would have even allowed the World Cup to start in October at the Big Air Chur. The strength values were already correct in late summer. Tanno says to Blick: “Actually, I’m fitter now than before.”
And yet she’s been taking it easy over the past few months. Not only did she stay away from the Chur competition, but also from all other World Cup competitions in November and December. She says: “Of course Chur would have gone physically. But a clean, good structure is more important to me. I prefer to get on in the middle of the season instead of at the beginning and for that half-heartedly. »
At the Laax Open she approaches again on Friday morning, but misses the final in slopestyle. But she’s back. With now a lot of confidence in her recovered knee – and enough power to be able to attack again.
She has learned: “There are not only Olympics, but also other cool things.” The current home event, for example, to regain the feeling for a competition. Or the World Championships in Bakuriani (Geo) in February, which is still a big goal of hers.