Beijing Winter Olympics: Fountain chosen as Lady Europe in the Closing Ceremony

The blue with the most medal ever elected as a symbolic athlete. But she remains an open case: “The diatribes with the Federation? The first step is not up to me”

From our correspondent Paolo Marabini

More than a thread, it is a knot: Arianna’s knot. The blue ice is getting colder. And the Beijing thermometer has nothing to do with it, which is well below zero. “It is not up to me to take the first step” says Arianna Fontana at Casa Italia, fresh off the award ceremony in the Medal Plaza, where she received the silver medal won the night before for a handful of thousandths in the 1500 meters. With the addition of some good news: on Sunday evening, at the closing ceremony of the Games, she will parade representing Europe. The reference is to the diatribe with the Federation denounced several times in recent days, after each of the three medals – each time increasing the dose – that Fontana won in the Capital Stadium.

Mediation

The knot is well known: Arianna, the queen of short track, said she was hindered by the FISG in approaching the Olympics, rather than helped. And now she urges a mediation, a meeting point between the two parties, to mend the rift. “We have tried many times (she and her husband-coach Anthony Lobello; ed) to take the first step to try to find a solution, a way to work and improve together. They want to put me in a box, from which I had to come out in the last years to be able to be competitive here. If we start like this, we can’t even go on “. The knot is also the figure of Lobello, for whom Arianna would claim an official role within the federal technical cadres. “They have to understand that mistakes have been made,” said the Olympian. “In four years the Italian team has changed four coaches, the last two months before the Olympics. It’s not normal.”

Malagò

President Andrea Gios postponed his speech on the matter to today’s press conference. In the meantime, however, the president of Coni, Giovanni Malagò did so: “For some time Arianna has had an autonomous management of the stages that brought her to Beijing. Is this normal? No and it shouldn’t happen. I have talked about it many times with her, you know how close I have been to her. It is not the first time that an athlete has a different vision from his Federation and trains with his personal coach “. Yesterday Malagò dined with Arianna and her husband. The mediation has already started.

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