The ‘Velasco Girls’, the girls’ volleyball team, brought back the gold medal to Italy after 20 years in an Olympic team competition. The last Italian triumph in the five circles was that, also in the women’s field, of the Setterosa (water polo) in Athens 2004.
For Italian volleyball, this is the first gold after two silvers, that of Velasco’s men’s Italy in 1996 when they lost the final against Holland (Lorenzo Bernardi, now Velasco’s assistant, was on the field), and, again for the men, in Rio 2016 when the Azzurri coached by Gianlorenzo Blengini lost the final at the Maracanazinho against the hosts Brazil.