Barp swears to the Fiamme Gialle, aiming for the World Cup in Norway

The talent from Trichiano won three races out of the first four of the Opa Cup. Yesterday he was at the ceremony at the Predazzo finance station

The first part of the cross-country skiing season ends and gives Belluno cross-country skiing a nice confirmation: Elia Barp is a gentleman athlete.

The boy from Trichiana, 19 years old on Sunday, won three out of four races held in the Opa Cup (the circuit reserved for Alpine countries). The fourth was only virtually won because, due to an error in the last hundreds of meters, he took the wrong turn when he was clearly first, finishing sixth.

There is no doubt that he is the strongest of the Southern Europeans. An impressive roadmap for the bearer of the Fiamme Gialle, who grew up first in the Gs Castionese and then at the Ski College of Falcade, which blossomed in February 2018, in his second year as Allievi, with the splendid silver conquered in the Abruzzo mountains of Alfedena. Since that day, an unstoppable march.

«This start of the season is going really well. I worked for this, I knew it could be done and I hoped to be able to do it », says the athlete from Trichiano, who has been transplanted to Agordino for a few years. «I am happy with these results, obtained in the presence of so many people who are going fast, at the end of good challenges. The race that I liked the most? Sunday’s 15-kilometer mass start skating: I love the mass start format, running on humans. I feel at ease in a group, I probably also take advantage of the experience I had when I was racing on a bike ». With the first slice of the season closed, Barp will now experience two weeks of preparation in view of the resumption of the Opa Cup, the Italian Championships in Padola (15 and 16 January) and, above all, the Junior World Championships in Lygna, Norway.

«At the world championship I would like to do well in 30 km skating. But also in the relay, a race in which we have a good chance ».

OATH

Yesterday, in the meantime, at the “General Carlo Valentino” barracks, headquarters of the Sciatori Fiamme Gialle group in Predazzo, Elia took the oath of loyalty to the Italian Republic in front of the commander of the sports center of the Guardia di Finanza, General Flavio Aniello, and the commander of the V Athletes Team, Lieutenant Colonel Gabriele Di Paolo.

With him, also the Trentino cross-country skier Alessandro Chiocchetti, the combinatists Iacopo Bortolas and Stefano Radovan, the biathlete Linda Zingerle and the jumper Jessica Malsiner.

“It is an honor for me to be here with you today to consecrate your oath with my presence,” said Aniello. «This is a moment of profound reflection, the oath is the act by which one places oneself at the service of the Republic, committing oneself every day with discipline and honor in serving the country and in observing its constitution and laws. It is your precise duty, dear girls and dear boys, in addition to giving your best in the sporting activities that you are called to carry out with commitment and professionalism, to follow these key words every day of your life: honor, fidelity, discipline, legality and formality ” .