From skiing to water: Federica Brignone's liquid trajectories

The fragility of the planet and the sustainability of the environment in which we live increasingly depends on the choices we make day after day.

Fortunately, more and more athletes are supporting beneficial causes for the health of the planet and one of these is certainly Federica Brignone. The career of the Italian ski champion has 27 career podiums including 10 victories, 8-second places, and 9 third places.

Historical bronze medal in Giant Slalom at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang 2018 that Italy had been waiting for twenty years and the third most successful Italian ever in the Ski World Cup and the first Italian skier in history to win in three different disciplines in the same season.

We met Federica who told us about her career, her passions, her everyday life and in particular her relationship with water and her project Traiettorie Liquide (Liquid Trajectories), which thanks to strong images aims to raise public awareness of marine pollution, underlining the sustainability and value of water as a limited and not infinite resource, to raise a new awareness, an invitation to change mentality.

Federica Brignone and sports, an early love

Federica Brignone is a sunny, competitive, energetic girl who loves nature and healthy living, who never stands still and who lives off her passion for skiing.  She started when she was a year and a half old, the first time she wore them, and from that moment on she doesn't want to do without them anymore. I loved going fast and sliding on the snow -she tells us.  I'm full of energy and I really like to train and do sports all day long.

Sport is a way of life, and Federica Brignone likes to compete and always give her best. Not only skiing: figure skating, athletics, climbing, golf, and tennis are also passions that Federica practices or at least follow on television, keeping up to date.

When Federica Brignone was a child, started with artistic gymnastics and then I also did figure skating, athletics, climbing, golf, and tennis. In addition to skiing, which has always been my favorite sport. I'm not just a sports fan, but I also like to watch TV, keep up to date on results and meet the best athletes.

Federica Brignone and the snow

Snow, as well as water, have been that need to be analyzed before being experienced actively as a sport.  Snow is an element that needs to be understood, depending on the type of snow I have under my skis my skiing changes. I love snow, especially when it's icy in a race.

Federica Brignone's love of nature also comes from the outdoors. We live in crazy landscapes, beautiful places and sometimes outside the world. The mountain then continues to change and with it the slopes and snow, you never get bored.

Federica Brignone and her relationship with the coach and training

Coach to Federica Brignone is like a father. Very important, both on skis and for the athletic part.

The coach gives you feedback on the skis day after day to help you understand what you are doing, sometimes the feelings do not reflect the facts. In athletic preparation it's fundamental, I notice the difference: it spurs me on, motivates me and only makes me think about what I must do, so every day I can give my all and work harder and harder.

It's also very important on a personal level. A good coach knows when it's time to push you and maybe be tougher, or on the contrary be sweeter and cheer you up, explains Federica Brignone. I am the person I am, she explains, today thanks to all the teachings that coaches and people in the environment in which I grew up have given me.

There is a moment in the life of an athlete when you understand that it is time to be serious. But in fact, it took me a few years to make a real radical change.  I was enrolled in university and I quit two years later so as not to "lose" an hour of training and only 5 years later I took a personal athletic trainer and a mental coach.

In short, Federica Brignone was already very professional as an athlete, but she never missed anything from a human point of view, with a normal all-around life.

Liquid trajectories: when Federica Brignone skis at the bottom of the sea

Federica Brignone has created the project Traiettorie liquide.  The aim is to make people aware of the value of water, the most precious and indispensable resource for the life of man and the planet.

Disconcerting data on marine pollution

The data of ocean pollution is disconcerting.

• In 8 years, there will be 1 ton of plastic every three fishes
• We have gone from 15 million tons in 1964 to 311 million in 2014
• The drama is that the estimate will be doubled in twenty years
• Today, 95% of plastic packaging is lost after its first rapid use,
• 40 years after the first recycling symbol was launched, only 14% of the packs are recycled.

We need to rethink the plastics economy and totally change our approach, living together in the best way for the survival of the planet.

The photographs of Traiettorie liquide, which will be taken on tour in Italy and around the world, are a way to enhance the beauty of the clean sea and to strengthen the environmental responsibility of all. Federica Brignone will also be joined by the mascot Blue, a dolphin that will help to involve even children on the need to respect nature and the sea.

Liquid trajectories - Federica Brignone's project to protect the environment

In 2017 and 2018, Federica Brignone plunged into the water to document, through even more impressive images than the previous ones, how the pollution caused by the presence of plastic in the seas is seriously endangering the lives of marine flora and fauna and consequently that of all of us.

The photos aim to convey the great sense of claustrophobia and suffocation felt by Federica Brignone who has identified with the inhabitants of the sea.

"As happened last summer in Lipari, I willingly made myself available to the project this year to dive in the water with my competition outfit to tell you, through the photos of Giuseppe, the terrible feeling of being surrounded and suffocated by plastic with enormous difficulties of movement. Unfortunately, this is what the fish, the turtles and the inhabitants of our seas are experiencing... We must all work to stop this terrible catastrophe."