Rita Saja is fighting for the blue jersey

The Eporediese in the Perugia race confirms himself as a big Italian “I owe everything to my family, to my company and to the spirit”

IVREA

Race after race, 51-year-old Rita Saja, born in Ivrea and living in Chiesanuova, mother of two children aged 21 and 26, is making her dream come true: the call-up to the national team in view of the World Cup in a specialty that has always been available for men. : carpfishing.

She and her teammate, Luisella Crivaro from Novara and the colors of the Novara carpfishing company are climbing the specialty rankings. In the Pietrafitta basin, in the province of Perugia, they won again over the weekend, even mocking many boys. What is carp fishing? It is one of the techniques most practiced by freshwater fishermen. It is growing rapidly in Italy and is dedicated to a single prey: the carp (queen, mirror, amur) which, once captured, is placed on a special mat (or cradle), unhooked, weighed, photographed and set free. Even the wound caused by the hook is disinfected, rigorously without barb. Carp do not ingest the bait, so they are not life threatening. The competitions take place from Friday to Sunday morning with the athletes camped in tents on the shores of the lakes, in all weather conditions

“It is a primordial embrace of nature, the true essence of fishing where the environment and prey are always respected”, says Rita Saja who can proudly display the tricolor shield sewn last year on her t-shirt when she collected over five thousand comments on her Facebook profile congratulations on the victory, from all over Italy.

She is an extraordinarily thoughtful person, patient (and she couldn’t be otherwise waiting for the carp bites for whole nights) generous as well as damn superstitious, she doesn’t want to say a word about her competitive future but wants to dedicate “A special thought to her teammate Luisella Crivaro with which I shared sacrifices and hard work but also the immense joy of the Italian flag, unexpected but strongly desired. Then my company, the industrial Fasti of Montalto Dora who cheers for me and always grants me permits to be able to train and compete and finally to a girl, who is not my teammate. Her name is Aurora Zorzi, 17 years old. During one of her races, her teammate got injured by unhooking a carp and her judges forced her to go to the emergency room. Aurora finished the race alone, fishing and landing the fish for a whole day. Here this is our spirit ». –