I trained very hard. It’s the same for every competition I had. And you are ready and fully prepared.
You put the mask o and don’t care about who’s in front of you. You only think about Fencing.
It’s the final of the London Olympics.
I didn’t watch it straight after the Olympics, I took some time before watching it, to enjoy it all by myself.
I made the first attack, 1-0 to me.
Here I was having a special opponent, I was fighting against Arianna, she’s Italian.
There are difficulties as we know each other and we are often opponents,
and she’s also a friend of mine, and a person I respect and appreciate.
It’s a difficult assault and you can also see it from the score. We are always very close. It’s exhausting.
At the beginning of the second period, I was winning 3-2.
At this moment I had my 4th thrust, so it was now 4-2.
I just trust my feelings. I don’t have strategies, that’s the way I am.
Generally speaking, I have no strategies, I follow my instinct, I trust my feelings.
I’m a very impulsive person, in Fencing and in my personal life.
I always do what I feel doing in that moment.
Yes, yes of course I was worried. But… I wanted the gold.
It was an assault between two Italians, and because of that neither of us had our own coach at the end of the piste.
It was difficult, I had t do everything by myself.
This is the third period, we are now 10-8 for Arianna. And it is 45 seconds to the end.
I wanted to catch up, I needed to catch up. I'm in a frenzy, but nothing.
I was tense, I wasn’t calm at all, I needed to recuperate.
I was trying to find the balance between my frenziness of getting back on score and my own calm in order to make the thrust.
Sometime I just don’t realise.
Here, I just won the Olympics.
Here’s my brother and my sister. My brother came and hugged me.
It’s exciting because it was also unexpected. It came at the very end, I won in the last few seconds.
The strongest memory is the look on people’s faces, especially Stefano my master,
then my brother, my sister, my mother and father.
I saw the impact of the Olympics on their eyes.
They were out of their minds. This is the greatest memory.
I’ve dreamt about it before going to London.