Every time Nadia Battocletti runs and wins it is as if she puts a missing mosaic tile back in its place, healing a gap that was thought to be irremediable, as if the child within us sees the teddy bear he loved and lost in childhood returned to him. Because every time Nadia runs she gives back to Italy what for a long time was its place in the history of athletics: a privileged place in the middle distance, from cross-country, to the track, to the road. There was a time when whatever happened we knew that from there, between eight hundred and 10 thousand metres, something would return home.
Then, suddenly nothing, like a generous tap suddenly become stingy. At a certain point you get used to taking for granted that it will be dry forever. But no. She arrived, with an open smile, with that sweet and refined way of presenting herself, as elegant in running as she was implacable in sprinting with formidable timing. And it was a bit as if the tape had rewound, giving us back our best age. Maybe, who knows, someone will have told her that once upon a time there was an accountant with a mustache that at 25 years old gave him an indefinite age who ran like her, just a little more upright in the torso and with the knees a little higher but with the same timer in the heart and the same apparent ease. But above all with the same guarantee of success that we have lacked for 35 years. In the space of just two years Nadia has achieved her goal in all the competitions that heaven has put in her path. The gold in the 3,000 at the World Indoor Championships is a further step forward. We risk getting used to it, to the point of no longer seeing the fatigue that she hides so well behind her superfine class. But it would be unforgivable to take for granted his talent and the intelligence with which he is governing it.
Nadia’s gold is not the only pearl of this World Cup in the room, there is also the very precious gold in the triple by Andy Diaz, recovered after a period of difficult health, and the gold in the 60 meters by Zinab Dosso, together they make three certainties of Italian athletics.
