Photo by Chiara Arienti
With the announcement of the convocations for the Tokyo Worlds, it was also implicitly announced Federica and Massimo's absence from this competition, and their retirement from competitive skating. (Here's the communication on the fisg website and on Artonice). After seven national titles, two European silver medals, one World bronze medal, the participation to three Olympic Games culminated in their fifth place in Vanouver 2010, ten Grand Prix podium placements, and countless emotions given to fans and friends, a long carreer has come to an end after almost ten years.
Foto di Chiara Arienti
But to tell you about this good bye, and to adress all the friends and fans that remained on their side through so many emotions and adventures, it's Massimo that takes the stage (or better, the keyboard) to tell you something.As you all might know, we've arrived to the end of this long adventure; it was an extraordinary journey, made of passion, sacrifices, good and bad moments, tears, smiles and lots of emotions; it was a journey we faced first of all as persons, and only secondarily as athletes - a travel that changed us, made us stronger and allowed us to cross our path with those of some extraordinary people that suffered and rejoiced for us and with us; people that loved us, supported us, brought us into their enthusiasm and passion, and taught us never to give up.
The main reason that had pushed us to face this one more season was the dream of crowning our competitive carreer with an European gold medal, and that unfortunately didn't happen - but we have no regrets because once mor ein our lives we went for it, we tried and we fought till the end.
In addition to thanking everyone, from our families to our teams (old and new), from the choreographers to the medical staff, from the Federation to the judges to all our fans, what I really wanted to tell you is that after the Short Dance at the last Europeans it was really, really difficult for us to go on. It was maybe the first time in all our carreer that we felt we did not have any more energy to finish the competition, and not even the famous phrase "skate for yourselves" could work anymore; well, it's exactly in that moment that you all were our real strenght, we skated just for you, to thank you for being on our side for all these years, in the good and in the bad times.
As an athlete, I have always thought that we could reach immortality only with a gold medal, but now I have understood that the real immortality comes in the memories and the love of all the people that touched our lives.
Thank you to everyone... and now, we'll be ready to face a new fabulous adventure!
Foto di Chiara Arienti
Of course, we're now asking ourselves... and now? Won't we ever see them again? Federica will start working for the Police (and on a family!) while Massi has already starte working in Detroit with Pasquale Camerlengo and Anjelika Krylova's team... Well, don't worry! For a start, next month there will already some shows we can point out to you:
-Aston (Pennsylvania) April 1st and 2nd
Foto di Chiara Arienti
See you very soon, then!
