Federica Brignone shows competitive skiing on return from injury with Olympics approaching

SAN VIGILIO DI MAREBBE, Italy (AP) — Defending overall World Cup champion Federica Brignone is back skiing after a nine-month injury layoff and already competitive with the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics little more than two weeks away.

Mikaela Shiffrin, meanwhile, keeps regaining ground in giant slalom.

Austria's Julia Scheib, though, is the racer to beat in GS.

Scheib claimed her fourth giant slalom victory of the season Tuesday, moving up from third after the opening run to finish 0.37 seconds ahead of Camille Rast and 0.46 ahead of defending Olympic champion Sara Hector, who led after the first run at the Kronplatz resort.

Shiffrin placed fourth, 0.86 behind, and Brignone was sixth, 1.23 back.

“It was really tough with all of the emotions I had today, so I was really happy to see the green light,” Brignone said. “It’s been nine difficult, tough months, so I’m proud of myself. It was all new again for me in terms of emotions. I’m really happy that I raced today. If I had waited for the Olympics to return it might have all been too much.”

The 27-year-old Scheib had never won a World Cup race before this season but now she leads the discipline standings with a comfortable margin of 139 points ahead of Rast.

Shiffrin, the American winner of a record 107 World Cup races, has not finished on the podium in giant slalom in exactly two years — since before her crash in Killington, Vermont, in Nov. 2024.

Shiffrin won the Kronplatz race three times, including in 2023 when with victory No. 83 she broke the all-time women’s wins record previously held by Lindsey Vonn.

It was Brignone's first race since breaking multiple bones in her left leg in April — which resulted in two surgeries — 42 stitches to put her leg back together — and months of rehab.

“When I stuck my poles out I said to myself, ‘I’m not sure if I’m ready.’ My hand was shaking,” Brignone said after the opening run. “I started off quite rigid, which makes it tough in these conditions. But then I remembered to breathe after the first checkpoint and then it went a bit better.”

Brignone won't compete in the next set of technical races this weekend in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic. Instead, she'll head to nearby Cortina d'Ampezzo, where the women will race during the Olympics, for some speed training.

“I want to see if I’m able to participate in the races. I need to gain a bit more confidence so I can really charge," Brignone said. "Right now, I make two or three good turns and then I hold back on the next one. But I’m leaving San Vigilio happy and confident.”

Sofia Goggia, another Italian, lost control midway down and didn’t finish her first run.

Also for the U.S. team, Paula Moltzan was eighth and 20-year-old Elisabeth Bocock was a career-best 12th.

Nina O’Brien had fast splits in her second run before losing control on the steep slope midway down. The American spun around and slid down before coming to a stop near the safety netting. She got right back up and appeared to avoid serious injury.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Austria's Julia Scheib celebrates winning an alpine ski women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin checks her time at the finish area of a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

Austria's Julia Scheib speeds down the course during a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin speeds down the course during a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)

Italy's Federica Brignone celebrates at the finish area of a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin prepares to start a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin speeds down the course during a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

Italy's Federica Brignone prepares to start a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)

Sweden's Sara Hector speeds down the course during a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

Italy's Federica Brignone speeds down the course during a women's World Cup giant slalom, in Kronplatz, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

LONDON (AP) — Love is, famously, a many-splendored thing. It can encompass longing, loneliness, pain, jealousy, grief — and, sometimes, joy.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, the many facets of passion are going on display in “Love Letters,” a public exhibition at Britain’s National Archives that covers five centuries.

Curator Victoria Iglikowski-Broad said that the documents recount “legendary romances from British history” involving royalty, politicians, celebrities and spies, “alongside voices of everyday people.”

“We’re trying to open up the potential of what a love letter can be,” she told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Expressions of love can be found in all sorts of places, and surprising places.”

They also take many forms. The exhibition ranges from early 20th-century classified ads seeking same-sex romance to sweethearts' letters to soldiers at war and a medieval song about heartbreak.

There’s also “one of our most iconic documents,” Iglikowski-Broad said, referring to a poignant letter to Queen Elizabeth I from her suitor Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Written days before Dudley’s death in 1588, it conveys the intimacy between the “Virgin Queen,” who never married, and the man who called himself “your poor old servant.”

The missive, with “his last lettar” written on the outside — spelling at the time was idiosyncratic — was found at the queen’s bedside when she died almost 15 years later.

Love, in the exhibition, doesn’t just mean romance. Family bonds are in evidence in Jane Austen’s handwritten will from 1817 leaving almost everything to her beloved sister Cassandra, and in a 1956 letter in which the father of London gangster twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray, implores a court to go easy on the brothers, because “all their concern in life is to do good to everybody.”

The letter writers range from paupers to princes. In an 1851 petition, an unemployed 71-year-old weaver named Daniel Rush begs authorities not to separate him and his wife by sending them to workhouses. It’s displayed alongside the Instrument of Abdication through which King Edward VIII gave up the throne in 1936 so that he could marry “the woman I love,” twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson.

“There is a lot of connection in these two items even though on the surface they seem very different,” Iglikowski-Broad said. “In common they have just this human feeling of love … that the sacrifice is actually worth it for love.”

Other documents tell of love lost. There is a never-before-displayed 1944 letter from young British intelligence officer John Cairncross to his former girlfriend Gloria Barraclough, reflecting on what might have been. “Would we have broken off, I wondered, if we had known what was coming?”

Some readers may think Barraclough had a lucky escape — years later, Cairncross was unmasked as a Soviet spy.

Some love stories tell of danger, heartbreak and tragedy. In one, Lord Alfred Douglas asks — in vain — for Queen Victoria to pardon his lover Oscar Wilde. The writer had been sentenced to two years in prison for gross indecency after Douglas’ outraged father revealed their relationship.

Nearby is a letter written in 1541 by Catherine Howard, fifth wife of King Henry VIII, to her secret beau Thomas Culpeper.

Archives historian Neil Johnston noted that the tone of the extraordinary letter is “restrained panic. She is warning him to be very, very careful.”

Catherine signed off the letter “yours as long as life endures.” That turned out not to be long. The king discovered the affair and both Catherine and Culpeper were executed for treason.

A letter by Queen Henrietta Maria to King Charles I – “my dear heart” – is a real rarity, since Britain’s royal family guards its private papers closely.

It was found among possessions left behind by the fleeing king in 1645 after a battlefield defeat for royalist troops in England’s civil war. Charles lost the war and was tried, convicted and executed in 1649. The letter ended up in Parliament's archives, which last year was transferred to the National Archives.

“We don’t have very many intimate letters between monarchs like this,” Johnston said. “This is a little gem within the disaster of the English Civil War.”

“Love Letters” opens Saturday and runs to April 12. Admission is free.

A letter written by Lord Alfred Douglas to Britain's Queen Victoria, petitioning for the release of Oscar Wilde from prison on display during a press preview of an exhibition entitled Love Letters at the National Archives in London, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, Wilde was imprisoned in 1895 for gross indecency. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

A general view of part of the Love Letters exhibition at the National Archives, with pictures of the writer Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, in London, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

A 16th century letter written by Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, to Queen Elizabeth I, on view during a preview of the Love Letters exhibition at the National Archives in London on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, shows two dots written above the word poor, a reference to the monarch's nickname for Dudley: Eyes. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

The will of British author Jane Austen on display during a preview of the Love Letter exhibition at the National Archives in London, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

The Abdication document of Britain's King Edward VIII on display during a preview of an exhibition entitled Love Letters at the National Archives in London, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, Edward abdicated on Dec. 10, 1936. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)