Chiara Mazzel and Giacomo Bertagnolli doubled their medal haul and each climbed a step on the podium. She is golden, he is silver.
Five medals for Italy
And, driven by them, Italy reaches five medals in the first three days of the domestic Paralympics, putting the seven placings in Beijing in its sights while it is too early to venture comparisons with the 13 in Lillehammer. In Cortina d’Ampezzo, on the Tofane, it is another day of celebration for the blue colours. The first to raise her arms to the sky is the skier from Fassa who, after the silver in the ‘visually impaired’ downhill, this time hits the big target in Super-G, defeating the Austrian Veronika Aigner: 60 cents for the first five-circle success of her career. «I’m very happy with how it went, also because this morning during reconnaissance I started having a very bad headache and I almost didn’t want to leave because I couldn’t keep my balance. I’m also super satisfied with how I handled this inconvenience”, she celebrates, together with the guide Nicola Cotti Cottini: “She was good, she was much more decisive than the other day, so I’m very satisfied”, he comments. The Minister of Sport Andrea Abodi also celebrated the winner, defining her as «an example of how sport can be the right tool to be reborn, abandoning the solitude of a room and starting a new life, full of enthusiasm and hope».
But it is a victory to remember also for another reason and that is, underlines the Trentino councilor for linguistic minorities Luca Guglielmi, because it is the first Ladin gold at the Paralympics. The appointment with the victory was postponed by Bertagnolli, who however took the tenth medal of his career at the Paralympics and the second in these Games: together with the guide Andrea Ravelli he took silver behind Johannes Aigner, in a very tight race which went to the Austrian by just 16 hundredths. The glass, however, is also full for the champion from Cavalese: «We are very happy. It’s a beautiful silver medal, it’s the second of these games in the second race, so for now we’re two out of two”, notes the Italian. «The way I skied, the way I attacked the slope, the way I arrived, it’s like it was gold – adds Bertagnolli -. Tomorrow we will need to take it seriously.” The top step, moreover, is the only one he still lacks in his home Games after the bronze in his debut in the downhill and the second place today. The opportunity will come tomorrow with the combined. With the Mazzel-Bertagnolli pair, Italy flies to fourth place in the medal table, with two golds (including that of Emanuel Perathoner yesterday in snowboard cross), two silvers and a bronze. Meanwhile, today the redemption of wheelchair curling has arrived. After a difficult start, marked by three defeats in a row culminating in the 10-1 defeat against the United States, the Azzurri of the mixed team won 10-0 over Slovakia. Mixed curling, on the other hand, concluded its group adventure by defeating Great Britain 11-10.