People | Federica Pellegrini

The water is sweet

Mirano 1988. Beijing 2008. A 20 year gap. The same 20 years that  Federica Pellegrini has been on earth since she was born in Mirano. She’s a golden girl. Everyone thinks so. First and foremost of course, swimming fans. She’s unique and she’s flying the flag for Italy this year. Funny how we always leave the watersports to the girls in Italy. Alessandra Sensini gave us bronze in windsurfing in Atlanta in 1996, gold in Sydney in 2000 and bronze again four years later. Now we’re all counting on Federica Pellegrini in the swimming. Sensini won gold in Australia where seven years later, Pellegrini stopped the clock at 1 minute, 56 seconds and 47 cents setting a new world record in the ladies 200-metre free style semi-finals. Just seeing Federica in the water is a treat. Her body seems totally at one with the water but it could hardly have been any other way: “I began before I was a year old in a class for newborns,” she tells us. The rest, as they say, is history. “I got myself results in my first races. It all happened very spontaneously with no big effort.” But this is the moment of truth. After that world record and several medals in the world championship, it’s time for the Olympics. “Beijing is goal I’ve been working towards for four years. It was a long, hard grind getting through the qualifiers, not to mention the training. Five hours a day in the pool plus an hour and a half in the gym, three times a week,” says Federica who will be representing her club, the Circolo Canottieri Aniene in Rome, as well as Italy. She doesn’t see swimming as an individual sport either – she sees herself very much as part of a team. “The relay really gets me going. Swimming with a group and for a group really encourages me much more than competing alone,” she continues. “Do I feel pressurised about the results I have to get? Recently I’ve reached a kind of balance that’s allowed me to turn pressure into a spring that makes me go even faster.” Her favourite win? “The last one, in Eindhoven, the 400-metre free style with all the world records,” she says. Her worst disappointment? “Montreal in 2005. But it proved very useful to me. You learn to comeback stronger than ever after things like that. To grow and look ahead with even greater determination. A defeat lays the foundation for a victory.” The most difficult moment in any race? “The start. It feels like an eternity until the buzzer goes. But once you’re in the water the worst in over.”
From swimming pool to sea water isn’t much of a jump. Or is it? Pellegrini says: “I just can’t swim anywhere I can’t see the bottom! A swimming pool is one thing but it’s very different finding yourself in the open sea. Luca (Luca Marin, her partner and member of the Italian Olympic swimming team, ed.’s note) used to have the same problem but he managed to overcome it and now he’s even got a diving licence. But I’m still stuck at the start.” Well, maybe one day soon, Federica might find that overcoming her fear of  swimming in the sea is her greatest victory.
(Yacht Capital, n.7/2008)

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