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The Italian skier Matteo Franzoso has died at the age of 25 following a crash during pre-season training in Chile at the weekend, his country\u2019s winter sports federation (FISI) has confirmed.<\/p>\n
After suffering \u201ca major head trauma\u201d in the accident at the La Parva track on Saturday, Franzoso was taken by helicopter to the intensive care unit of a clinic in Santiago and placed in an induced coma. The FISI confirmed on Monday that he did not recover after \u201ccranial trauma\u201d and a subsequent swelling of his brain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a tragedy for the family and for our sport,\u201d the FISI president Flavio Roda said in a statement on Monday. \u201cIt is absolutely necessary to do everything possible to ensure that such episodes do not happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this sad and painful time, I want to tell all athletes and coaches, in all sports, that the federation is by their side and that they will find all the support they need,\u201d Roda added. \u201cI ask for the utmost respect for Matteo\u2019s family, whom we will stand by for as long as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Franzoso crashed through two layers of safety fencing and hit another type of fence positioned six to seven metres outside the course, the FISI said. He is the second elite Italian skier to die in a training incident within the past year, after the death of junior champion Matilde Lorenzi at Val Senales in October 2024.<\/p>\n A part of Italy\u2019s World Cup team since 2021, Franzoso was training alongside other Italian skiers including Dominik Paris, Christof Innerhofer and Mattia Casse in Chile. The team are preparing to race on home snow at the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February, but those preparations have now been marked by tragedy.<\/p>\n The US skier and Olympic gold medallist Lindsey Vonn posted a black and white picture of Franzoso on Instagram. \u201cThis is incredibly sad,\u201d Vonn wrote. \u201cI was skiing this exact slope three weeks ago \u2026 RIP Matteo. My sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Franzoso made 17 World Cup appearances and finished 28th in the Super-G event at the Olympic host venue, Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, in 2023 \u2013 his best performance at alpine skiing\u2019s highest level.<\/p>\n He also won a super-G race on the second-tier Europa Cup circuit in 2021, having finished fourth in the downhill at the world junior championships in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Italian skier Matteo Franzoso has died at the age of 25 following a crash during pre-season training in Chile at the weekend, his country\u2019s winter sports federation (FISI) has confirmed. After suffering \u201ca major head trauma\u201d in the accident at the La Parva track on Saturday, Franzoso was taken by helicopter to the intensive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2822,13228,1872,2527,13227,2596,13226,13225,13229,910],"class_list":{"0":"post-21560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-age","9":"tag-chile","10":"tag-crash","11":"tag-dies","12":"tag-franzoso","13":"tag-italian","14":"tag-matteo","15":"tag-skier","16":"tag-skiing","17":"tag-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}