In Birmingham, the British only talk about Amy Hunt, a graduate in English Literature from Corpus Christi, Cambridge, a highly cultured resident of Padua, a Renaissance specialist, clinically hypotensive, and also the fastest woman in Europe. Fabulous winner of the 100m and 200m, and headed for gold in both relays. The undisputed queen, but Nadia Battocletti is not far behind.
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The Italian long-distance runner is a marvel, her stride light, seemingly effortless, and a sweet smile that turns into cold determination when it comes to crushing her rivals’ hopes. A sharp blow like a kick. A change at 200m as if it were nothing. A 28s sprint, and that’s it. The title in the 10,000m (31m 41.17s) which she adds to the 5,000m from Tuesday.
The previous 9,800m were a carriage ride behind the rivals who set the race pace but did not agree to take turns and put her under pressure. They simply pulled until exhausted: the English Keith, the German Merkel, the Belgian Van Lent (third, 31m 47.81s). The Dutch Koster, also in the shadow, with Battocletti, was second (31m 45.76s), and fourth, magnificent, the Segovian Idaira Prieto, who pulls the second pack, challenges the wind and her limits, and achieves her best mark (31m 59.80s) to equal the fourth place of her father, and coach, the great Antonio Prieto, Taca, at the European Championships in Split 1990.
Battocletti is 26 years old, from Cavareno in Trentino, at the foot of the Dolomites, about to graduate in Civil Engineering and Architecture, and there is no cross country, 5,000m or 10,000m race that resists her in Europe, and in the world, increasingly her world, only the fabulous Kenyan, double Olympic and world champion, Beatrice Chebet, can beat her, who left her with double silver at the Paris Games and the Tokyo World Championships.
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In her victory in the 5,000m ahead of the Spanish doctor Marta García, Battocletti dissected a very complicated and slow race with surgical precision, two scalpel movements in the right place and moment: an incision to awaken the sleeping race at 3,000m, and a good cut with about 400m final in 58.7s. Times superior to those that allowed her to keep close to Chebet in Paris and Tokyo. “Finals that are part of my DNA,” she says.
Daughter of a former Moroccan 800m athlete, Jawhara Saddougui, and a notable Italian middle-distance runner, Giuliano Battocletti, the double European champion twice (5,000m and 10,000m in Rome 24 and Birmingham 26), would also be, like other figures in Italian sport — Furlani, Inzoli, swimmer Sara Curtis — a magnificent advertising poster about the virtues of mixed heritage and the weight of the mother’s genes in the children’s performance.
And with her intelligence and sensitivity, she is able to endure her father’s obsession, who is also her coach, to make her a champion in what he likes most, running. He could train more athletes, but he does not get distracted. He goes out with his only daughter every day, accompanies her on a bike when she runs through the forest, times her on the track, and advises her on race tactics. And he also sells her well to the media. “I have made her grow little by little, without rush,” says Battocletti senior, who also assures he will retire when his daughter does. “But she has not finished growing yet. Much more awaits her.”
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