SPICE – we searched for information on the injury of Elena Vallortigara suffered at the start of the high jump competition of the Italian Absolute Championships in La Spezia.
The only newspaper that talks about it – albeit very quickly – is the Nazione of Florence, which, speaking of the victory of Idea Pieroni, mentions the fact that the athlete from Vicenza would have torn her Achilles tendon of the right foot. The same problem is mentioned on the federal website. For a jumper (and for any athlete) one of the worst injuries that can be suffered, given the consequences of an entire career at risk and which includes a very long path of fatigue (physical and mental), dotted with many lows and few highs, before returning (if one returns) to being competitive.
During the RAI TV commentary, it was claimed that Vallortigara would undergo surgery today (or maybe yesterday). Hoping that everything went well, now begins the long rehabilitation process to bring Elena back to the top (in every sense).
To console her, we can only cite a more than paradigmatic example of what willpower can do, in its specialty, moreover: Gianmarco Tamberi. It was a midsummer night in Monte Carlo, July 15, when Gimbo jumped 2.39 – the current Italian record – and then moved the bar to 2.41. Third attempt, the last, and the unthinkable happened. The tendons that broke, the tears, the desperation. From that day on, Tamberi was born, who became the most successful athlete in the history of Italian athletics. Today, Pietro Mennea and Sara Simeoni are cited as if they were Saints, but Tamberi is now at their level. He is one of the mammasantissima of Italian athletics.
Already in the year following the injury, I like to remember, he jumped 2.29 in qualification for the world championships in London. A year had passed since that injury. Up until 2016, he had won an indoor world championship (in Portland) and a European championship (in Amsterdam), precisely in that 2016. Since the injury, an Olympics, a World Championship, two European championships and an indoor European championship. In short, what are we talking about?
It seems easy to write about it, and every injury has its own peculiarities and intrinsic difficulties. Elena’s injury happened to a very advanced athlete of 32 years, while Gimbo was 24. But nowadays athletic careers are very long (just think of Anna Chicherova, who jumped over 2 meters at around 40 years old) and the difference between reality and the dream is the will to face that path with the will to crown a career in which, perhaps, she could still say a lot.
