Francesca Lollobrigida brought the house down at the Milano Ice Park and then searched out her son to share her joy
E
ven before the final pairing of the women’s 3,000m speed skating had finished, two-year-old Tommaso was being hurried towards the middle of the track, where his mother had just broken the Olympic record and was on the verge of winning gold on her 35th birthday. When the final pairing of Joy Beune and Isabelle Weidemann had failed to beat Francesca Lollobrigida’s phenomenal time, the Italian sprinted through the bowels of the stadium to fetch her son.
Still basking in the glow of an excellent opening ceremony and the thrill of two medalists in the men’s downhill skiing earlier in the day, the hosts celebrated a new star. Lollobrigida, the silver medalist from Beijing in 2022, struck gold for the first time in her fourth Olympics. She brought the house down at the Milano Ice Park as she crossed the line in a time of 54.28sec, knocking two and a half seconds off Irene Schouten’s record from 2022.
There were cheers every time one of the splits of the following skaters was red – slower than the Italian – with the fancied duo of Norway’s Ragne Wiklund (silver) and the Netherlands’ Marijke Groenewoud falling short. Beune and Weidemann did not even come close and Lollobrigida was in tears before they crossed the line. “This medal means a lot, but also a demonstration – the fact of not giving up, to start a family, to become a mother and to come back to race,” said Lollobrigida. Valerie Maltais of Canada picked up bronze.
