Yesterday at Castelporziano, at the headquarters of the Sports Center of the Guardia di Finanza, a ceremony was held to greet two great athletes of the Fiamme Gialle and Italian sports, who after 20 years of glorious career have given the goodbye: Elisa Rigaudo, bronze medal in Beijing 2008 in 20km rave walk, and Simone Raineri, Olympic Champion in Sydney 2000 in the four pair.

Elisa Rigaudo, born in Cuneo on June 17, 1980, joined the Fiamme Gialle in November of 2002. Specialist in race walk, she participated in four Olympics, from Athens 2004 to Rio 2016, capturing, in addition to Beijing's bronze, a 6th and a 7th place. For her, she also held seven World Championships, with the best placement at Daegu 2011 with fourth place, then, six years later, bronze medal after the doping disqualification of the winner Olga Kaniskina. In the medal table she also boasts the Bronze of the Europeans of Goteborg 2006 and the Gold medal of the 2005 Mediterranean Games and numerous Italian titles.

Here's the post of Elisa Rigaudo on Facebook

In all these years I really did the utmost to represent my Country in the World. I hope with all my heart to have given you some emotion. I left today the Guardia di Finanza sports group where I was enrolled in 2002. Being part of the Fiamme Gialle sports group for me was not a point of arrival but a great opportunity to grow. I was lucky enough to shoot the world and to dress the blue Italian jersey in 7 Worlds, 4 Olympics and 1 European. The athletics for me was a life school, I realized:

- that with the sacrifice and the will you can reach unimaginable goals, 

- that a journalist's pen is better to erase than to tell, 

- than after big defeats come the best victories, 

- that the most beautiful victories are nothing if you do not share with the people you love and 

- that my most beautiful victory was a fourth place after my daughter was born. 

For me it is.

Thank you so much