20 years, 13 Olympic medals for phenomenal Fontana

A lot can change in sport over two decades – but not Arianna Fontana’s ability to collect Olympic medals.

She had to settle for silver in the women’s 500m as the title she won in 2018 and 2022 was taken by Netherlands’ Xandra Velzeboer.

It was Fontana’s second medal of these Games, after she helped Italy win the mixed team relay earlier this week.

The 35-year-old – the only woman to have finished on the podium in six consecutive Winter Games – now has 13 medals, equalling the tally of fencer Edoardo Mangiarotti as her country’s all-time record holder at an Olympics.

Fontana has won at least one medal in every Olympic short track distance.

It was a magnificent full-circle – or full-oval speed skating track – moment for Fontana after she also won her first Olympic medal at a home Games – Turin 2006 – as a 15-year-old.

“I had no idea what was happening!” Fontana told the BBC’s More Than The Score podcast last week of that 2006 bronze in the 3000m relay.

“I was just living the dream. I was too young to really understand what it meant to be on the Olympic podium. Then when I went home, I had my whole hometown waiting for me.

While an unknown teenager in Turin, she is one of the faces of this year’s Games 20 years on. Fontana carried the Italian flag at the opening ceremony at San Siro, leading the home nation as tens of thousands of compatriots cheered in the crowd.

It was the second time Fontana was honoured to be the opening ceremony flagbearer, having also carried the flag at Pyeongchang 2018.

On how she has kept winning Olympic medals and maintained her place at the top end of speed skating since before Instagram was invented, Fontana says it comes down to a love of the sport – and a love of herself.

“I do have experience, but I have the same drive I did when I was 15. I never get on the ice just to show up,” she added.

“With time, I have been able to understand my body, and my mental fitness – I have taken more time off from racing, more breaks, because mentally it can be tough.

“Elite athletes, we put pressure on ourselves easily, we have high expectation and it can be hard mentally.”

She needed that mental fortitude in the build-up to the Games as a series of injuries – including a hip issue in October – hampered her preparations.

It put paid to Fontana’s plan to also enter long track events, forcing her to concentrate on her signature shorter disciplines.

It was a decision she took with her coach and husband Anthony Lobello after spending four years travelling the world to various competitions.

She needed all her nous on Thursday night. In the semi-final, as chaos unfurled all around her at the start – including medal rival Michelle Velzeboer falling – she kept her focus and skated a clean race.

And in the final, Fontana needed running repairs to one of her skates after a first-corner collision with Selma Poutsma meant the race was restarted.

But she kept her nerve and held off late pressure from Poutsma and Courtney Sarault to make it lucky 13.

A good job, then, that she pushed away all nagging feelings that this might have been one Games too many.

Fontana admitted: “Sooner or later you are going to retire, and I have spoken to athletes who have. You just feel it, you give it all, then it is time to move on.

“For sure, having the Olympic Games in Italy was another motivation, if it was in another country, I don’t know.