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Federico's Olympic Dream

, by Davide Ripamonti, translated by Richard Greenslade
World Championships gold medalist, plus two European silver medals. Federico Vismara, a student in International Economics and Management, is one of Italy's most promising young fencers. With his sights set on Tokyo


If at the age of 20 you have already appeared at five world championships, between under 17 and under 20, the natural goal can only be the Olympic Games. Federico Vismara, 20, a student enrolled in the second year of Bachelor of Science in International Economics and Management at Bocconi, is world champion of team fencing. An epee specialist, he won last April in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where he had already won European silvers, both individual and team, a few months before. "I was born in Milan, but I moved to Modena as a kid with my parents for work," he says, "but now, to attend Bocconi and to train with my teammates, I returned to the Lombard capital."

Federico belongs to the Fiamme Azzurre sports group and is training intensively, 4-5 hours a day, with some of the top athletes of Italian fencing, such as Enrico Garozzo, Olympic team silver medalist in Rio. "It's crucial to be able to train with stronger athletes, helping you grow. I started at age 5, when fencing is mainly a playful activity, then as I grew I began to be more and more committed. As a child I always had the Olympic dream, but naturally once the first successes come in and you make the transition to the under 20s, the dream begins to take shape. "

Now, at the threshold of the passage to the unlimited category, Federico is steadily among the top 7-8 athletes at national level, and has set a specific goal: "I have given myself eight years to qualify for the Olympics: either 2020 in Tokyo, or the next one in 2024. " To reconcile these training rhythms and competitions, "I've been pretty much away from the end of February to early April," he explains. That plus the university is tiring, but Federico is doing fine. "I'm very organized and I have few distractions, so this allows me to keep up with my exams," he says. "The university program I chose leaves me many roads open for the future when I am done with fencing. I do not want to exclude any path now, even though I would like to work in management for some big sports companies, maybe one of the American professional leagues. "

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