Eleonora's Long March

If you are a young person just starting out in competitive sports, your dream is almost certainly be to able to compete in the Olympic Games one day. This is how it works for most disciplines. However, the dream rarely comes true, because to take part in the world's greatest sporting event you really have to be top crop. And yet there are also those for whom Paris will be their fourth Olympics. This is the case of Eleonora Giorgi, 35 years old, bronze medal in the 50-km walk at the World Athletics Championships in Doha in 2019, bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and Management and master's degree in Economics and Management of Public Administrations at Bocconi. An adventure that began in London 2012 and will end (but that's not yet certain...) in Paris 2024, passing through Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2021, in an ideal tour of the world that has given her joy and some sorrows.

Let's talk briefly about each of the Olympics you have taken part in, including the next one. Let's start from the London Games.

I define that Olympics as completely unexpected, almost beyond my dreams. Until the year before I was following the athletes on TV and now I found myself there among them. A little girl's dream that became true sooner than I had expected.

Then there is Rio de Janeiro, in 2016…

Those were the Awareness Games. I came from great results, I had set numerous Italian records in race walking and I knew what I was worth. I was an athlete on the up. Unfortunately, however, the end result was not the one I would have liked.

In 2021, rather than in 2020 for the reasons we all know, Tokyo arrives.

An edition of the Olympics that was surreal in many ways, we were all quarantined, creating a truly strange atmosphere. For me, the Olympics were very difficult from a physical point of view, because I was coming from a bad injury, but also mentally, due to the situation in which we all found ourselves.

And now we return to Europe, where it all began…

These are my first Games as a mom, first thing. And these will be the games of experience, in which I will try to make use of the positives and negatives I learned in the previous editions I participated in. But they are also, at least I hope so, the Olympics of rebirth.

Shortly after the end of the Paris Games you will turn 35, an age at which athletes either no longer compete or are close to retirement. What are you going to do? And most importantly, will this be your last Olympics or is Los Angeles 2028 on your mind?

I would certainly like to continue until next year, because there are the World Championships in Tokyo, where the 35 kilometers should return, a race that suits me more than the 20-km distance of the Olympic walk. Then I have no certainties, because four years is a long period and many things can happen. However, I don’t deny that the goal of a fifth Olympics has a certain attraction.

Paris is the City of Light, with its cultural and architectural beauties known throughout the world. What will be the route of the walk?

It will be a walk across the city center, very close to the Eiffel Tower. A fascinating route that you can't help but admire while you do the race. And then Paris is a special city for me because when I graduated my partner Matteo (Giupponi, a walker himself, European bronze medal) gifted me with a trip to the French capital. I always return to Paris with pleasure also for this reason.

For Federico Vismara, a fencer and a Bocconi alumnus like you, the Paris Olympics will be his first Games. Which advice do you feel like giving him?

Give your best but above all have fun and experience the Olympic Village for all it can give you. Compared to World Championships, European Championships and other major international competitions, it is the closeness to and sharing with athletes coming from all sports disciplines that makes the Olympic Games such a special adventure.

translated by Alex Foti