Record-breaking Italy at the Milan Cortina Olympics. With the other four medals won, including two golds, Federica Brignone and her teammates rise to 22, becoming the most medal-winning Italians ever. After thirty-two years and seven Winter Games, Lillehammer is just a memory, a beautiful one but a memory. And there is still room for improvement: if in Norway the twentieth podium came on the last day, with Alberto Tomba’s silver in the slalom, there are still many medals up for grabs at the XXV Winter Games and Italy can have its say in various disciplines. From Manuela Di Centa, Deborah Compagnoni and Tomba, in fact, to Arianna Fontana, Francesca Lollobrigida and obviously Brignone. The fans hope to sing Mameli’s anthem again like at lunchtime on this historic sunny Sunday, the “Snow Tiger” on the top step of the Giant after Thursday’s Super-G, the only Italian to have won two golds in the same edition of the Games.
Before her, only Tomba “the bomb” had succeeded in doing so for Italy. The medal that equalizes the score with the past goes to the skier from Milan, but from the Aosta Valley by adoption, a few minutes after the bronze of the men’s cross-country relay which in Val di Fiemme increases the expedition’s haul to nineteen medals with the quartet formed by Ganz, Barp, Carollo and the eternal Pellegrino. There was already enough to celebrate and instead at coffee time the overtaking comes: in Livigno Michela Moioli invents a comeback of her own and, paired with Lorenzo Sommariva, wins silver in the mixed team snowboard cross which rewrites history. However, the adrenaline rush is not over yet, because shortly after it is Anterselva who raises his arms to the sky for the first Olympic gold of the Italian biathlon. Lisa Vittozzi is the one to get her hands on it in the women’s 10km pursuit. And it is the 22nd medal of this beastly Sunday, Italy’s eighth gold in Milan Cortina, another record for the Azzurri of this unforgettable home Olympics. Second in the medal table behind only Norway, which has just two more medals but eleven golds, the successes come from nine disciplines – like never before – when in Lillehammer there had only been five. For the Italian Ice Sports Federation there are three golds, and there is also a record of athletes medalling, seventeen, while those of the Italian Winter Sports Federation are 21, also a better result. Also considering team sports, there are 38 Italians who to date have a medal around their necks, 21 men and 17 women in an Olympics which, at least for Italy, is increasingly about women. Six out of eight triumphs come from the women and one from the short track mixed relay pulled by Elisa Confortola and Arianna Fontana. Up to now, prizes worth close to 5 million euros have been awarded to the Italians, as never before. In short, records for Italy are plentiful in this edition which, with still seven days of competition to go, is already ‘guinnes’.