Forty-four
kg. of nerves, thirty years of agonistic frenzy, fifteen seasons with a list
of physical troubles long as the shopping list. These the Stefania Belmondo
numbers, Piedmontese langlaufer who at the latest world championship at Ramsau
succeeds in catching two golden medals, neglecting who hurriedly deemed her
finished last year at Nagano. Just from the disappointment of the 1998 Winter
Olympic Games, it starts the run-up of the shrimp of the Stura valley, till
the recent awarded targets. Just a year before (February 1998), in the 30
km at the Japanese Olympic Games, Stefy dominated till the 25th pass, she
seemed to repeat the gold at Albertville in 1992, when atmospheric elements
intervened: it started raining and the skis turned ever heavier, stuck on
ground by drops turning the piste into a real mud. The azure clan has not
foreseen the technical drawback and, notwithstanding the Belmondo' furious
twirling, the Russian Tchepalova started the catching-up of, getting it done
in finishing straight. 
Wound
to her pride but not subdued by the events, Stefania shelters meekly at her
Pietraporzio, twenty-five living souls in all, to wonder herself what she
can still give to this sport, which kind of motivations and which sufferance
threshold she can still bear at the eve of the thirty. However it was, Belmondo
tries it again, she starts training for the 1999 world championship. She does
it with the usual scrupulousness, making 700 Km. pistes training, getting
up at five o'clock in the morning to jog, going on with the mountain bike
and having a vegetables and apples diet. The result? At starting of the 10-km
pursuit freestyle race, Belmondo is as a frightened colt, the judges finding
it hard to see her. It must still to erase the unpleasant memory related to
the Trondheim 1997 world championship. This case the finishing tape duel with
the great friend- enemy Elena Vialbe takes her away the shouts of joy: four
silver medals behind the invincible Russian. That of the 15 km has been the
first achievement of the Belmondo at Ramsau, a victory improving the Italian
skiing movement getting out from the Vail alpine world championship having
the worst of it. At the “Regina delle Alpi” Hotel, seat of the Belmondo's
fan club, it is toasted with champagne. There's who tries his luck, hoping
in the Superenalotto. Two numbers are in: 18, the total Belmondo's victories
of, and 43, the number she dressed when winning. At two days from the first
golden medal the Belmondo repeats in the 10 km chasing race. A ferret dressing
the seven-league boots gets to the Austrian stadium with her arms up, aware
there is nobody behind her. One of her fans sides her in the final meters,
running after her with a flag, Stefy hesitates, she does not know how to do,
to accept or to turn down the invitation, running the risk of losing thrust
and co-ordination. It is still alive in her the drama of Trondheim, when the
Vialbe won over her for few centimetres. At the end it prevails his noble
nature, the people contagious enthusiasm; Stefy cannot let people down, and
so she catches the flag and takes it away with her till the finishing post.
It's the apotheosis, mainly at Pietraporzio, where bells awake the few still
unacquainted of the undertaking of their fellow villager. A little village
for a great woman, that in a week becomes, over world and Olympic titles basis,
the second Italian athlete of all times after Deborah Compagnoni. When Stefy
seemed to give up, her husband helped her to think it over: “Bear 365 days
at home, a real tragedy. It's better you go on!” And then full speed ahead,
maybe to tease the younger and the Russian school reckoning her most dangerous
rival, by now her great friend. When doping is at matter, Stefania declares
herself clear as the waters of the Stura, the stream bisecting the valley
and asserts: “I've been educated at sport since I was a child, hard training
and hard work, and I would like, when I will stop competition, to find myself
among a lot of young and to make them understand how much the neat sport is
beautiful. I've never met Physicians that could propose me something strange
since they knew my aversion again medicines. I'm not interested in doping
shortcuts, I've been a loser for such a long time...” From the ugly duckling
to the queen, without forgoing herself, the everlasting values by which softening
without remarkable damages the eventual falls in a hard and seesaw world as
the sport one is, where, as the protagonists says, you always reap what you
have invested.
Leadership
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