Stories of the Olympics: Ondina Valla, the first gold medalist for Italy

Surname Valla and first name Trebizond – like the Turkish city on the Black Sea – first daughter after four sons, definitively and for all Ondina. She was the first woman in the Italian Olympic roll of honour. It happens at the 1936 Berlin Games. Discipline: athletics. Speciality: 80 meters hurdles.

When she leaves for Berlin with the blue group, no one pays attention to her, no one thinks that she can bring home a medal, any one. The newspapers snub her, sometimes she isn't even mentioned among the athletes who will take part in the Games. But Ondina is tenacious, aware of her strength. The day that is worth a lifetime is August 6th, a Thursday. Ondina Valla is twenty years old. Before the start, the athlete complains, her legs hurt, she can't loosen her muscles. The masseur Giarella hands her two sugar cubes soaked in cognac: throw them down, Ondina, they're good for you.

Ondina is in lane 4, wearing bib 343. In lane 2 there is another Italian, from Bologna like Valla, her name is Claudia Testoni. The two are friends, but rivals. And they concede nothing to each other. The race is a flash, Ondina rides him. A photo finish is needed to decide the winner. Gold medal: Ondina Valla. The time is extraordinary: 11”6. And it's worth the world record.

The first to approach her is her friend/rival Claudia Testoni. She is furious, she too has come to risk everything on the line. And she demands attention. She takes Ondina aside and tells her: «You only won because you have more breasts». Ondina doesn't reply, she limits herself to giving a fleeting kiss to the necklace around her neck, the Madonnina of Bologna. She goes to the podium and celebrates the victory with the fascist salute: those are the times, the Duce, Benito Mussolini, is in power.

In an instant – thanks to his victory at the Games, but also to his radiant smile and blond curls – he becomes the symbol of healthy and robust youth fascist. She lends herself, she doesn't mind her notoriety, it becomes an instrument of propaganda. However, she is also the woman who forever changes the history of Italian sport for women.

In career wins 15 national titles, despite repeated injuries and pain in her back and knees forcing her to stop continuously. She also competes in other disciplines, including javelin throwing and penthatlon. She holds the record in the women's high jump: it was 1937 when she jumped 1.56 metres, a record that would last for 18 years, until 1955. He only participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, then the Second World War turned the world upside down.

She should have also gone to the 1932 Los Angeles Games, but I told her that – in a ship of only male athletes – it would have created problems. In reality, it was the Vatican that opposed it, with the veto of Pope Pius XI, who did not want female athletes. At the end of her career she married the surgeon of the Rizzoli hospital in Bologna, Guglielmo De Lucchi. When he dies, she – the mother of a son – remarries. Ondina Valla died in L'Aquila in 2006, at the age of ninety.