2000. When the Olympics speak Italian

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

When the Olympics speak Italian

Taken from the 2000 Journal of Sailing, Year 26, no. 10, November, pp. 50-55.

Never have the Italians done so well at the sailing Olympics. The spoils are one gold and one silver. Alessandra Sensini (windsurfing Mistral) after 48 years stands on the highest podium and Luca Devoti is second in the Finn. Chronicle of an achievement never achieved.

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In an edition also marked by finnist Devoti’s silver, Alessandra Sensini crowns a fantastic season in the Mistral and breaks a 48-year-long fast. Portrait of a sunny champion who wants to amaze the world again.

Riding the waves with a sailboard has always been his way of life. And the sea has slowly become her natural habitat. Alessandra Sensini, the girl from Grosseto who won gold in the Mistral class at the Sydney Games, breaking a 48-year-long taboo for blue sailing, talks about her sport with dreamy eyes, making you emotional “Windsurfing gives you a sense of freedom,” she says. When you slide off with the wind pushing you fast, it’s a beautiful feeling, an extraordinary thrill. You don’t know how many meters of water are down there, and yet ries us to float and if you fall you know that “he” embraces you, surrounds you. Every splash, every wave is a caress. The sea is something extraordinary, a friend with whom you can play and have fun.”

Already the sea. A constant presence in his life. At the age of six he began with swimming; at eight, together with his keen diver father, he descended into its depths for the first time. Then came cross-country running, athletics, basketball. In Grosseto, however, where she was born and where she lives, there are no major teams. And for the Sensini, playing a sport has always meant competition and competitiveness. Until one day, almost by chance, pushed by her older sisters Irene and Eleonora, comes windsurfing, which will prove to be the defining encounter of her life. At 15, she won her first Italian junior title. And she hasn’t stopped since. This beautiful girl with big green-gray eyes, hair surrounding her face like so many crazy snakes, an infectious smile and an air so joyful and sunny that it reconciles you with life, has been undefeated in Italy since ’85. And while Francesco de Angelis last February failed his assault on the America Cup, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Alessandra became world champion of the Mistral class. Result? Full pages and many TV reports for Luna Rossa, two-line blurb in major newspapers for her. Nothing unusual, however, in our country.

For Alessandra Sensini, 30, 5’7 “and 58 pounds, a diploma in accounting, Sydney was her third Olympics. After half a disappointment in Barcelona (seventh but close to the podium) and bronze in Atlanta, she took the top step at the end of an extraordinary duel with Germany’s Amelie Lux. Only those who prepared with fierce grit could impose themselves in the last meters of the last edge of the final event.”I trained five times a week: every day two hours on land, with running, biking and gym, and two to four hours on the board in the sea. I am followed by a close-knit staff: Luca De Pedrini has been my coach since “95 and Marco Ghezzi my athletic trainer since” 97 – he explains-the effort is a lot, but it’s not enough: it’s mostly strategy and racing technique that win in the end.”

A life, Alessandra’s, spent taming waves in the most diverse corners of the earth. “Nine months a year I’m out in the world with my board looking for challenging waves and tough rivals to beat: it’s the life I dreamed of even though my last real vacation was five years ago“. Australia, New Caledonia, the Canary Islands, Hawaii. There is enough to provoke envy in her listeners. In Hawaii she lived for three years, albeit on and off.”It was the best place to train, but there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about changing my plane ticket home – tells – I found myself in a kind of circus where everyone around you lived only as a function of windsurfing in a manic way, kind of like that told by the protagonists in the movie Point Break“.

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What about the future? “L And big choices in life I put them all off. Always being in the middle of the sea isolates you. I’ve never been a disco person. I’ve never been into group life. My decisions I have always made all by myself. Loneliness has always been my companion. – he confesses, and a slight shadow seems to veil the radiance of his eyes. “Sometimes this has weighed on me, but I can’t imagine myself pinned down in one place. There is a gift and silverware store in Grosseto, which I have in partnership with my sister, that is always waiting for me. But I haven’t yet thought about when it will be time to stop with the Windsurfing.” As late as possible, we hope.

(N.E.)

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