| Description |
Excellent auto-biography of the Italian swimming champion.
Races have never been a walk in the park for me, but I looked for that fight to the last breath. If I understood that I had to enter the water and fight to the death, the adrenaline would flow and I would be happy.
The ideal condition for competing was to feel like a hunted animal. The night before a race I would almost not eat. It was the tension, of course, but also a way of preparing for the assault, like the wolf that fasts and loses weight before going hunting to face the fight. Hunger or lack of appetite were not just nervous forms, but manifestations of an atavistic instinct to fight. At the beginning, when I was just a girl, I felt an emptiness inside that I filled with victories, but after a while it was no longer that. From a certain point on, I only did it for myself. They asked me who I wanted to dedicate my victories to. The most difficult ones, the ones that came after hard times, the ones of rebirth, I dedicated them all to myself. Because I was the only one who knew what sacrifices I had made to get those results. I was the wolf. What did the others know, who had lived even half of what I had lived?
Does this make me a bitch?
21 x 15 cms, softback, 208 pages.
2023
|