Also win the 10,000m (with an Italian record) after the 5000m (ditto)? Done. And Nadia Battocletti thus enters the history of Italian athletics, becoming the European queen of cross-country skiing. And when she goes up to the official stand to receive the compliments of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, you can see from a mile away that she is having a hard time holding back her emotion. «The President was very excited, like me: it was nice to run in front of him and everyone», she will say at the end in a jubilation of people who want to hug her and congratulate her. Her race was perfect, carefully thought out and executed with impressive clarity for a truly historic double.
fans
—
“This is a medal that I dedicate to everyone, thanks also to the presence of our President, the stadium was full and this helped us – she says -. It was truly a golden evening, I had a lot of fun. I promised myself I would have fun, with these fans it’s all wonderful. I made a leap in quality after last year’s World Cup in Budapest, you learn more from defeats than from victories I understood that without sacrifices you can’t achieve anything, I put in the effort day after day, sacrificing everything myself”. It’s logical that with these two golds you can now dream of something bigger. “Let’s see, we still need time for Paris. But these results were needed to train with greater intensity and also sacrifice something more. In the last month I understood that without sweating, without efforts, nothing is achieved. We need to acquire that mentality of the greats champions who do 800 and 1500 in a week. After the 5000 I was full of ailments. Let’s say that the 5000 were more for me, the 10,000 for all the people who were close to me.”
daughter of art
—
Nadia Battocletti is a daughter of art. His father-coach Giuliano is a former Italian middle-distance and long-distance runner, but his mother Jawhara Saddougui also has a past as a middle-distance runner, former Moroccan national team. Nadia is an all-round runner: she successfully practiced cross-country, road and mountain running, until she exploded on the track, with the highlight of 7th place at the Tokyo Games in the 5000m. After the first European gold on this very distance had told your tactic. Winning, after having problems with the structure of the pelvis. “They told me “imagine having a Ferrari but with the pins not tightened properly…”, his phrase which also better reflects the physical conditions. And yesterday too we saw the same race tactic: always in the leading group before the decisive breakaway with 500 meters to go. “I, like a crow, had to stay there”, she said on Saturday, adding: “I would have left even earlier, but I trusted dad’s experience who is very intelligent and so I took action in the end…”. More or less what happened in the 10,000m, demonstrating perfect race conduct. “Yes, but in the 5000m the approach was more aggressive – she concludes -, here I only promised myself to have fun in front of the public. Running with all these people is not a usual thing for us, you will understand that when it happens then it is truly a moment unrepeatable. Two gold medals, in Rome, at home: what more could you ask for?”.
