PALUZZA. All the blue shivers of the Japanese Olympics on me had a very special taste. Japan is part of my heart. How much emotion in returning after 23 years there where I stopped my competitive activity in my last Olympics. Flying to Tokyo here they re-emerge all the moments of Nagano of my fifth and last Olympics with a beautiful bronze in the relay, my seventh medal at the Games and that return with so many emotions and so many doubts and questions about what I would do in the new millennium.
How many thoughts on a future as a manager, without being able to ski anymore, what I have always loved to do most, on how not to be able to give my all on the slopes, flying on skis, in search of perfection. Bronze relay; relay race between careers, from athlete to manager, in the Olympic Village, the first Italian woman elected to the IOC and among the very first in the world. Relay also with my brother Giorgio, 9 years younger than me, who in Nagano was at his first experience in five circles. I deeply remember that very intimate passage, very ours, familiar, Carnic.
From Di Centa to Di Centa, yes, from sister to brother, but also from athlete to athlete. This is my state of mind in mid-July 2021, traveling towards the “rising sun”, with that tricolor tondo that recalled him on the Italian Team’s ordinance suit, which I loved very much: a concentration of strength, all from part of the heart, precisely at the center of the person, because, let us remember, even in sports, it is always the person at the center. I immediately thought about it, looking at the award-winning Giuffrida on the podium, I really liked her judo. The Longo Borghini race was also wonderful.
The great beauty
But Italy’s medals are all extraordinarily fantastic. After Tokyo, I think that the image that emerged from Italy is that of a great beauty, from every point of view, male to female, with any shade, silver, golden or bronze, beautiful in the fourth places, in every final reached, with charm of those girls and boys who compared to the last Olympics have found the desire to do better and finally went to the podium. And, on the plane, in the 13 hours of flight back from Tokyo, all these enchanting snapshots of a beautiful and strong Italy came to mind.
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Sport is today the visiting card of our beautiful country in the world. A country in recovery that wants to be alive, strong, that has never broken down but also that has been able to be found ready and prepared. An Italy that has been able to organize itself with its technicians and athletes, with its managers to team up, ready as always to emerge in times of difficulty and which has once again discovered itself “to be discovered”. In fact, there is the whole boot represented in the blue medal table, every corner of the country. I think of when in the Olympic charter we wanted to add the word “together” to the famous Olympic motto “Citius, altius, fortius”. Here it is I saw it appear: “together”, from any angle you examine it, it always gives you the same values: solidarity, friendship, brotherhood. Together for me means every corner, every village of Sardinia, Sicily, Puglia, Umbria, Campania, Piedmont and of course Friuli Venezia Giulia.
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Friulians from Tokyo
We are then to the Friulians of Tokyo. And I want to start from a defeat, that of the gymnast Alexandra Agiurgiuculese, who is now one of us, who speaks Friulian strictly living in Udine. If I met her tomorrow in a bar I would tell her that she is and still remains very good and wonderful, that her commitment must continue in this rhythmic discipline, as I imagine she will do because this is the story of her life and of life in general: the beauty of hoping to conquer something and then, when you are there, on that podium to be able to say “I was right to believe in myself”.
Because you get there if you believe. We look at Jonathan Milan of Buja, land of medals and coins, near Tolmezzo, and that Friulian beat in the gold of team track cycling, in pursuit. How beautiful that blue train, in 4 but with a single heart to strike on the track and on the podium.
Also from applause Mara Navarria, the mother with the sword who never gives up, also from Friuli doc. Disappointed for the individual race, she gave her all in the team test and I must say it was not easy at all to reach bronze. And then Mirko Zanni, a boy from Pordenone who lifted these crazy weights. Great surprise.
How not to greet the legendary one Chiara Cainero, for her a very painful Olympics, but I want to say thank you, because in a serious way, she competed putting everything into skeet. The Friulians are strong. Now if I look to China at the next Winter Olympics, who knows what another Di Centa, my niece Martina, Giorgio’s daughter, will be able to give us. Very young, a native of Friuli, she will probably be there, despite having had a disastrous fall on her bicycle this summer. It has to go a long way. But his goal is in 2022.
Close encounters
“We must have faith, we must have hope, together”. I like to underline the words of the IOC president, Thomas Bach, pronounced on the eve of these Olympic Games which are very difficult to organize, but very important for the reasons we all know, due to the world pandemic. The IOC’s commitment to carrying out these Games has been decisive and truly commendable. Tokyo will certainly remember a very severe, rigid, inflexible Olympics, without being able to shout at the stadium with many distances and attention to protect the athletes and the Japanese population. There were many in disbelief about this beautiful Olympics, but it was completed responsibly and successfully. The meaning of the various sports, the athletes, the athletes, the stories have finally come out. By the way I would like to applaud Rai, its great television effort.
Really good. With the great champions who commented on the youngest in the running for a title. Here too a generational relay, with the Azzurri Legends, my teammates Yuri Chechi and Sara Simeoni in dialogue with the new legends, I think of Tamberi and Jacobs, obviously above all. I believe that the sport narrated in this way is truly significant because it communicates intertwined stories, family stories, of life. But Tokyo was also a series of encounters for me. Many.
In addition of course to Bach, in Malagò with whom we celebrated in the beautiful Casa Italia, what surprised me most, immediately after the suggestive opening ceremony on 23 July at the national stadium, was on the first day of racing, in road cycling. . The president of the organizing committee, Seiko Hashimoto, bronze medalist in the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1500 meters in speed skating, arrived at this futuristic Japanese racetrack. With her, who has Italy in her heart having lived in the Bergamo area, it was a very cordial meeting, full of ideas.
Head and heart
I didn’t hug her in Japan, I didn’t meet her Irma Testa, but hers is the truest story I want to tell you. There was so much pain around those tears after the early elimination in Rio in boxing. And then that day in Brazil I simply said to her: “Irma, this is a beautiful moment in life, if you will be able to turn it … into a victory in the future.” This is the life of athletes. I left Irma like that 5 years ago. And I found her as everyone now knows her: wonderful, capable of wanting to be herself, a butterfly, despite the fact that boxing was always considered “too much for men”.
The letter to Federica
Finally another relay, about Italy. I would also like to celebrate Federica Pellegrini, elected athletes in the IOC, at the Olympics as it happened to me. She is a living Legend. Beyond the good wishes, I wrote you a heartfelt, official letter, because, having passed through it, I know that these are decisive moments, these in which you leave the skin of an athlete and enter that of a manager. I wish you the enthusiasm and commitment that the Venetian champion has always had. And then work together as a team with the elected in the IOC in altitude athletes. I’m about 17. Faith will do very well. Welcome!
Sport, tourism and PIl
Latest budget. There are actually 72 medals placed around the neck of the Azzurri, considering couples and teams. It means that more or less one Italian in a million gets on the podium. Sport is basically the expression of the ability of a country, because it demonstrates the organizational strength and energy of the people, technicians, managers, athletes, who belong to it. Identifiable and represented with numerical values. And not only because Jacobs and Tamberi will be worth millions of euros for a sponsor from tomorrow, but because the whole of what we have shown in Japan has an aggregate value.
It is that great sporty Made in Italy. Therefore, a lot of work must be done to further promote sport on the territory and in the tourism sector. To anyone who asks “what is sport today” I think I answer that sport today is an added value and then we should transform it into a GDP, which is not only an accounting, numerical proportion, but is instead an economy (then it will inevitably also turn into numbers) which, however, passes on to the side of the charge, of emotion, of the strength of saying “we can do it”. Sport and this Olympics have given all Italians an energy to put into their engine to start again. I believe it is a boost, a great accelerator for the country.
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