Immense Federica Pellegrini. Never like now Divine. Six years after the double in Shanghai, seven years after the European title won one kilometer behind Dune Arena in the most difficult season of his career. The blue returns to the roof of the world looking at everyone from above. And he does it in the face of the most successful woman ever, Katie ledecky, who had never lost a match at the World Cup (12 consecutive successes at the individual level).
Gold and never again for Federica Pellegrini. He took all the adjectives. Like qualifications that turn into defects and defects in qualities. Sweet and grumpy, shy and arrogant, perched in privacy or overflowing in media exposure, the girl next door and the vamp you'd follow until you get lost.
A young Italian who has flourished in the most beautiful of realm and in the greatest realm. The realm of water and sport all dressed in blue.
La woman of the seven wonders. An Italian legend.
Federica Pellegrini's 200 meters are the summary of a life spent fighting in the water
Two hundred meters of legend because there is a way and a way to win races. And she, Federica Pellegrini, always chooses the most exciting, letting his rivals vent and then going to overtake them one by one, inexorable, infallible in his flight on the surface of the water.
I 200 meters they are the juice, the concentrate of a struggle, of a suffering, of a rebirth and comeback when everything, or almost everything, seems lost. The unpredictable and the triumph for yet another gold that accompanied the various phases of a very long and unrepeatable career.
And it also happened yesterday in a different race than he could have imagined on the eve.
Federica Pellegrini: the greatest Italian sportswoman ever
Smiling but also distraught, almost incredulous, amazed like all those who pushed her to the Duna Arena. Once again Federica Pellegrini is a new one that speaks of her fifth world triumph.
THEAzzurra it proved to be a pride for everyone. A flag for the Italians.
It takes a steely character to bend even time as she did. Federica Pellegrini at 16, in 2004, was the youngest Italian medalist at an Olympics. Now, there she is, with world gold around her neck, thirteen years later. The opponents of that time are all at rest. Those of today all look at it from the bottom up. All, including that Ledecky phenomenon. An athlete who has won five Olympic gold medals and who nevertheless had to bow to Pellegrini's irrepressible desire for revenge.
The blue is undoubtedly the strongest Italian athlete in history. He has won everything in one of the two great Olympic disciplines: the I swim.
