«Here many women in recent weeks have talked about their experiences and their ideas, and tonight it’s my turn. I have never shied away from comparison: I know I have character, and I’m not ashamed of it. I have always fought for what I believe in, I exposed myself and I defended the people I love, paying the consequences. Its part of the game. So I accepted, I thought about it, and there is one thing that made me think in particular: in all these years, in which I have competed against women, why have I had to compare myself with men so much more often? Men who were waiting for me whether I won or lost ».
Thus begins the monologue by Federica Pellegrini, dressed in red and a guest, but also host for one evening, of the Hyenas on Italia 1, in which the Divine of Italian swimming speaks, in no uncertain terms, to men: to those who for all of her sporting life have always supported her and others who have always judged her. «Because if you fall you are a finished athlete, and if you stand up you are a princess placed on a pedestal – says Federica -. Pedestal that, in any case, sooner or later you pay, because if a man wins and goes rightly proud of it, he is a bomber, if a woman wins and goes rightly proud of it, he pulls it off. So they are all waiting for the disaster, like “let’s watch through the peephole what happens”, that if it goes wrong we go out on the landing to celebrate. Men who judged my private life, because if you are a male athlete and you have relationships you are a successful man, if you are a female athlete and you have relationships you are man-eating. Like that son of a swimming coach, who when I defended my coach tweeted “yeah, he’s your penis of the year”. A very fine sports analysis … which I then ask myself, why “the penis of the year”? Is it annual, like the car tax? ‘
«Men who at 16, at my first Olympics, when I was struggling with acne like all teenagers in this world – underlines the 2008 Beijing Olympian – commented on the radio” it will be testosterone “. How many laughs. Men who, in my work, have the right to victory because all the sports that you, a woman, have started to practice, they practiced them first, they performed them better, they invented them. Because important sports “are men’s sports“. Because important things “are men’s things”.
So for the five-time finalist in as many editions of the Olympics «it’s time to take stock, and so tonight I tell these men that if you liked to think so, I’m glad you enjoyed it, at least you. To other men, those in my life, I say thank you for giving me a look that believed in my eyes, in my strength, in my beauty. It is men who matter to me: those who do not need men’s things ». «Ah, there are also str … women, of course – concludes Pellegrini -. But they asked me to speak for a few minutes, not for a few seconds. ”