Skating: Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii gold at the European Championships, the first time for an Italian couple

Never had a pair of Italian figure skating reached so high. And they even did it in two. At the European Figure Skating Championships in Espoo, Finland Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii they won the gold medal in the pairs competition, ahead of their compatriots Rebecca Ghilardi and Filippo Ambrosini. Until now, Italy had reached the maximum bronze medal.

After the first place in the short, exceeding 70 points for the first time in their career, Conti and Macii also confirmed themselves in the free program on a medley taken from the soundtrack of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso by Ennio Morricone. They finished with 195.13 points total. Behind them Ghirari and Ambrosini arrived at a total of 186.96, a new personal best. In third place the Germans Hocke-Kunkel.

In the last two months Niccolò Macii and Sara Conti they didn’t expect to participate in the Grand Prix Final and finished third. They had never won the Italian championships and they did it. They certainly didn’t expect to win a European gold, but they were somewhat hoping for it as they tell in this interview granted a few weeks ago to Vanity Fair.

Niccolò Macii and Sara Conti were born respectively in Milan on 18 October 1995 and in Alzano Lombardo on 2 August 2000. They are a couple on ice and in life and they are the cup of the future of Italian figure skating, a future that has a precise objective: the Milan-Cortina 2026 home Olympics.

“Our preparation for the Olympics has already begun. We try to get there as best as possible, we also need to be known and have already achieved results», explains Sara, «but we never wanted to race so as not to have to take steps backwards and perhaps incur injuries». The federation pushed for the twist, for example, but they waited to present it in the race only at maximum safety. The philosophy is clear: those who go slowly go well and go far.

How did you start skating?
Sara Conti: «I was four and a half or five years old. My mother told me that I started on a vacation in France. Later I discovered that there was a track and a team three minutes from my house. From there I went every day ».
Niccolò Macii: «I was ten years old, I started after the 2006 Turin Olympics. I fell in love seeing the champions compete in Italy. My mother said absolutely not, but then I tried speed, hockey and artistic, which I loved the versatility of. You can range from a technical point of view because it’s the most complete sport on ice: sprinters don’t turn from two sides and don’t go backwards. I soon realized that the more I learned the more fun it became and you could create and invent. I went to the Palasesto every day, until my passion became my job and my mother became my first supporter. She always fought to let me skate even when the costs were high and maybe she wasn’t working at that time or when I got some bad grades at school and my grandfather said I had to stop so as not to take away time from studying ».

Together since June 2019.
Niccolò Macii: «I had been looking for a partner for three years and Sara was now tired of singles, very strong in training, but she couldn’t manage the solo competition well. We had already been engaged since the previous September and were dreading getting the job together as well. We tried and it went well.”

Your sport is difficult to practice in Italy.
Sara Conti: «The facilities are mainly in the North and some are excellent like the Ice Lab in Bergamo where we train. Then there is the fact that the costs are high. Finally, it is a very little shown sport, it hardly gets television broadcasts ».
Niccolò Macii: «The discipline is very complex also in understanding the scores, the competition comes from countries like Russia which have very different numbers from ours. We also work with the children to cover the costs».

However, your sport also has a strong artistic side.
Niccolò Macii: «Certainly there is an emotional part that is also recognized in the score. We always try to tell a story, express a feeling».

The hardest thing about your sport.
Niccolò Macii: «We grew up with hard training days, but we must always be at our best physically and mentally. The attention we must have, for example, for lifting is remarkable: if I’m not at my best, she falls from three meters. It pains me to always have to calculate everything during the day so as not to be late for sleep».
Sara Conti: «There are few things that weigh on me because I’ve been living this life for so many years that it’s all habit by now. I love to eat and I would like to go back to having a cheat every now and then».

Didn’t the abuses reported in rhythmic gymnastics affect you?
Sara Conti: «No, not with our coaches and on our rink. She has never been obsessed with weight and even my coach has never used words that could hurt me: she told me to keep myself under control and she told me that she saw me relaxed ».

An achievable dream and a more difficult one to achieve.
Sara Conti: «Going to the Olympics and being competitive, he says the difficult one».
Niccolò Macii: «One achievable is to win the European gold and get on the world podium, a difficult one is to win the gold in Milan-Cortina 2026 which would truly be a triumph for us, for our team and for the nation. We’ll try to have the best race of our lives there.”

Your life is always together.
Sara Conti: «There are no separate moments. We are together 24 hours a day. We have been living together for a few months. At first I was terrified. I like sharing, from groceries to friends. On the track he is my partner, outside he is my boyfriend».
Niccolò Macii: «We need to be a bit “bipolar”: what happens at work there must remain and when we had problems outside we continued to work together».

What do you like to do together?
Niccolò Macii: «I like watching movies, but she falls asleep».
Sara Conti: «Cooking together».

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