Mourning in the world of sport. Ski legend Celina Seghi, active champion especially in the 1940s and 1950s, died last night in Pistoia at the age of 102. In twenty years of competition, the skier won twenty-five Italian titles.
Renamed “the lady of the snows”, she was born in Abetone, in the Pistoia mountains, in 1920, a few months before Zeno Colò, another legend of Italian skiing also originally from Abetone. In her long career, Seghi has won 37 medals at the Italian ski championships (25 golds, 7 silvers and 5 bronzes) of which the first of her, in 1934, at just 14 years old, conquering the bronze in the special slalom.
The year of his explosion was 1937 when, again at the Italian championships, he won gold in three specialties: downhill, special and combined slalom. His career was inevitably conditioned by the Second World War. In 1941 he also won a gold in the special slalom and a silver in the combined at the World Championships that were held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, but subsequently the event was not approved by the Federation because many of the nations at war against Italy did not participate in that edition. . Her last medal, still in the Italian championships, Celina Seghi won it in 1954 in the giant slalom.
After retiring from competitions she became a ski instructor at Abetone where she continued to ski until she was over ninety years old.
Between the ’30s and’ 40s everyone called her “Red Mickey Mouse” for the red dungaree she always wore and which enhanced her small and snappy body, just like that of a mouse running away from the cat that wants to catch it: in her case the ” cat ”was the contemporary Zeno Colò, whom she loved to sow to wait for him at the end of the track and cheerfully tease him.
Those were the golden times for Abetone, with Celina Seghi, Zeno Colò and then Vittorio Chierroni and Gualtiero Petrucci, the “magnificent four” who were absolute protagonists on the slopes. And she, the snow queen, was a forerunner of all freedoms. Although she was born on March 6, 1920, she loved to tell that her ‘real’ birthday was March 8, the day dedicated to Women’s Day.
And on 8 March 2020 his Abetone was waiting for him for the solemn celebrations of the 100th birthday, organized by the Municipality. But Covid did not allow it and Celina Seghi had to settle for a home visit by Gabriele Magni, then councilor for sport, Vittoriana Gariboldi, president of Coni Pistoia, and Francesca Bardelli, national president of the National Veterans Union of Sport.