"After Rio I started winter training as always. Elena, my oldest daughter, in September started elementary school, and so was no longer possible to spend long periods away from home in Casterlporziano".

Is this one of the main steps of Elisa Rigaudo interview with Anna Chiara Spigarolo, which announces her goodbye to race walk.

The great Piedmontese athlete, after four editions of the Olympic Games, seven editions of the World Championships and 25 appearances in National team, announces her retirement from racing.

And it does so on the day after receiving the bronze medal that was missing, that of the Daegu World Championships 2011.

"I remember that fourth place (editor's note: third today) as beautiful. I was put back into play from January after the birth of Elena, and not imagined to be already so competitive”. 

She had started the experience in Italian national team in 1999 at an international meeting in Royal Leamington (GBR), as customary when the captain Gianni Perricelli, during the ceremony of the oath of flooded his hair salt and cut off a lock. "Only few please, Gianni".

Elisa Rigaudo had also tried this time to start, after Rio, beginning a technical collaboration with Lorenzo Civallero after that of the last two years with Patrizio Parcesepe, but the lack of stimulus this time has turned back into a bye.

Go Elisa, you've given us a lot, in dreams, satisfaction, emotions and why not, tears for the day in Beijing in 2015, while seven years before the tears were of joy.

We'll miss you, and we look forward to hug you to tell you: thank you for everything. Your children can be proud of a mother like that!

(photos by Giancarlo Colombo per Fidal)

Full interview by Anna Chiara Spigarolo on Fidal website: click here

Elisa Rigaudo report in our  "Hall of Fame": click here