Ambra Sabatini, perfectly imperfect

This article is published in number 51 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until December 21, 2021

Two short braids, a girl’s face that greets the camera with a smile and the adrenaline that makes her jump nervously on her leg and prosthesis: it is the image of Amber Sabatini while preparing to set the new world record at the last Tokyo Paralympics, in the semifinal of the 100 meters, to take home, finally, a gold medal from the top step of a podium entirely painted in blue. And we all, attached to the television, watched her cross the finish line and scream to the sky with joy, beaming.

He is 19, 20 in January, a strength and tenacity that I don’t remember ever having belonged to me at that age. They derive from the profound and definitive experiences of Ambra, who survived a scooter accident, with her father, in the streets of the Argentario, while she was going to athletics training. To save her life was a firefighter, who stopped the bleeding on that curve with a belt, but the leg was no longer curable. When she left the hospital she had been amputated just above the knee. I think it may have been a lot like grief: losing his body as he had come to know it and how he had seen it transform, stretch and gain muscle mass over the course of 17 years. It could also be a farewell to life as he had always lived it, because then, in 2019, Sabatini was already a promise of athletics, a middle distance specialty. She had arrived at that after having made a stop in volleyball for six years, and before that in skating – in symbiosis with sport since “a child”.

“This change of track is due to the fact that the gym was starting to get tight: I fell in love with the track, I was 12 years old”. It must have been destabilizing and painful to think, even for a moment, that he could no longer do what he loved, that he could no longer become who he wanted to be. That single event had thrown into the balance an infinite number of possibilities. Ambra, however, had always run, on her legs, on her bike, in the water, and then here, alongside those waning opportunities, as many dreams loomed – different, tiring, to build. “Stopping running was not an alternative.” After all, what can you do when something so important in your life is taken away from you? You start thinking about a new route and planning a parallel future. And in realizing this, Amber was a phoenix: she was resurrected, she redeemed herself and she won.

In fact, following the video of her extraordinary Olympic feat, I imagined her in front of the mirror, just two years earlier, while she was looking at a new body with which, yes, she still had to become familiar, but which would continue to change and grow with her. I am therefore not surprised by the security in his voice as he confides to me: «I was expecting such a result, I mean gold. Even if a race is always unpredictable », but life is too, Ambra knows it well and counterattacks, fiercely, as a result. In that decisive tone, the awareness of those who have consistently trained their body and carefully cultivated the relationship between this and the prosthesis is evident. “You have to be, in some way, courageous when you change models, it requires a period of adaptation,” she explains to me on the phone, a little out of breath. It is the Immaculate Conception and she got up at dawn to reach Padua by train to attend an event. She has never stopped since she returned from the Paralympics, so we made an appointment at 8.30 in the morning for a chat. What seems important to me is that, as we converse, neither of us talks about her prosthesis as something out of the ordinary – indeed, it seems to me that it is now part of Amber’s identity. By the way, I am reminded of the words of an American sportswoman, Chloé Valentine Toscano, a Paralympic swimmer who recently decided to have her paralyzed arm amputated: «This choice concerns my body and, ultimately, my identity. There’s no need to feel sorry for me or pity me “. I have this sentence in mind as I talk to Ambra and reflect with her on the need to normalize the paths of professional athletes with disabilities. Suffice it to say that only this year the legislation was introduced that regulates the access of disabled athletes in military sports groups, guaranteeing them the same economic and contributory treatment applied to others. The Greek prefix for Paralympics stands for parallel (like Ambra’s future after a risky overtaking by a motorist): they are parallel to the Summer Olympics, yet, they are still perceived as the second half, and not only in chronological order, of the Olympic adventure.

For Amber “Tokyo was a dream”: she lived it up to then through the stories of her companions. The atmosphere of the first Games is magical for her, it is also magical because it is the only time when so many disciplines, practiced by sportsmen with various disabilities, gather in one place. “It is wonderful to see such a large number of diversities coexist in a single village”. There is a breath of fresh air in hearing the youngest express themselves in these terms with respect to the themes of diversity and inclusion. Sabatini tells us a lot about the direction in which his generation is running, towards a more accessible world, even in sports.

The prosthesis became, with training and also with time, an extension, a piece of Amber that allowed her to learn to walk, dance and, above all, run again. «I like the race that you have to rely only on your strength: the result of the race depends entirely on you. The teamwork here lies in the collaboration with the coach and the technicians ». But at the moment of the race you are alone, it is a test with yourself. The cheering of her parents, her twin brother and her boyfriend Alessandro, however, support her, and push her ambition.

Starting running again was another gauntlet. The sense of freedom that the track gives you, the track, the adrenaline that rises with the strain on the muscles and the tension in the shoulders – here, “those sensations have remained unchanged” in the life before and after the accident, which forced Ambra to follow a path that was certainly unexpected, but no less exciting for this. «It took some time to regain the same freedom of movement I had before, because the initial steps, or rather the attempts, are more like limping than running. Slowly I got to where I am now ». It has reached, it means, an astounding Olympic result that is made so even by the preparation of just one year. In Japan she went to win, and that’s exactly what she did.

For being so young, Amber seems to have lived a lot, with intensity, with speed, and I have the feeling that she is not intent on, let alone destined, to slow down. In fact, I must remember that she graduated just last summer. “So far,” he says with a laugh in his voice, “reconciling the life of the sportswoman and that of the young woman has been extremely difficult.” Preparing for high school diploma, the rite of passage that is the farewell to an era, that of high school students, and to a Paralympics, an opportunity that comes once every four years, “was challenging”. Now, after a life spent in front of the Tuscan sea, the province seems no longer enough for her, as if it were too tight. Porto Ercole – “a beautiful place” – does not have a track, and the closest is to Grosseto, 50 kilometers away. “I enrolled in the degree course in Communication Sciences, at a Roman university”, and is then preparing, with some trepidation, to move on to the uncertain and new terrain of adulthood. “I’m going to live in the barracks of the Fiamme Gialle”, he continues, “where there are all the facilities and structures that I will later need for training”. He feels that he is happy to begin the Roman chapter of his sporting and personal experience. “Rome will give me the opportunity to devote myself to athletics.” It is almost a promise. She is not afraid to leave the places and people who have seen her grow up, change her body, look for a parallel path to the one before and win an Olympic medal – she wants to find a new setting because, in the end, this also means to grow up. So good luck, Amber.

NADEESHA UYANGODA, born in Sri Lanka, has lived in Italy since she was six. She is the author of the book The Only Black Person in the Room (66thand2nd) and creator of the podcast On Race. His works have already been published by Al Jazeera English, Not, The Telegraph and Vice Italia, among others.

Photo Mario Gomez
Roberta Pinna report
Make-up Simone Gammino@Julianwatsonagency using Shiseido
Hair Maurizio Morreale@Julianwatsonagency using Aveda
Manicure Elena Stepaniuk@Etoile Management

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