Minus 41 on day X, the one in which the eighteen-year-old Norah Elisabeth Milanesi, fresh from graduating from the Taramelli scientific high school, will go down to the tank at the Tokyo Aquatics Center in the women’s 50 freestyle battery (live on Rai channels Friday 30 July at noon, 19 hours local).
From Pavia to the Olympic Games in Japan. Norah will compete for Cameroon, mother Rachel’s hometown, but she will carry Pavia in her heart.
It is moreover with the Campus team which in recent years has made the great leap. «Norah has grown as an athlete and as a person – says her coach Mauro Comelli who, with his assistant Michele Gallotti, will accompany her to Tokyo -. She is determined, able to focus 100% on what she does. And he has yet to express his real abilities ».
A 2021 with a double challenge
The first test of 2021 for Norah Milanesi was at school. At 8 am on June 16 he walked through the door of the Taramelli high school, with the elaborate on Tesla and the secrets of the universe in his backpack, to come out an hour later with a weight less on his shoulders and‘Good luck of the professors for the Tokyo competition.
“Anxiety? I got used to checking it – she says a couple of days later on the poolside – My best friend Lorenzo who attended the exam was much more agitated ».
Next Wednesday he will be vaccinated to get the green pass. Then there is the university to think about (“I will enroll in computer engineering in Eindhoven, the Netherlands”). And even a little vacation “because we won’t be able to visit Japan, we won’t be able to leave the Olympic village,” he says.
From now to July 30th, head down training only: from 8 to 10, from 13.30 to 17 always in the pool at Campus Aquae.
The grandfather, the first fan
«To cheer, from home in Pavia, mother Rachel and father Oliviero will remain with my sister Zoe, who prefers dance, and my brother Yuri, who plays football and basketball – says Norah -. For me, however, water has always been a natural element ».
Friday 30 July when it’s time for his drums, in Cameroon it will be 11 in the morning. And in front of the screen there will be, with relatives, the maternal grandfather, the first fan of the athlete who in the African country – after the qualifications in March 2020 in which he burned his compatriots with his times – is considered a star. After all, Norah Milanesi is the first woman, since 1962, to bring the gold medal to Cameroon in the African championships.
In Ghana where she had flown in March of a year ago, in full explosion of Covid, to compete in the races that would have allowed her to have the right cards to dream of the Olympics (she has dual nationality), she had won 2 gold medals in the 50 and 100 butterfly and three silver medals in the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle.
The green and yellow jersey like the Cameroon flag is in the suitcase. With a whale on the blue field of the Campus team.