Federica Pellegrini, the aspiring divass, has become a national icon in Italy.
The Foro Italico’s Stadio del Nuoto can accommodate up to 13,000 spectators. At least three times this week at the World Swimming Championships, for Federica Pellegrini’s three individual finals, the venue was completely packed.
Each of those three Evenings it was Packed to Capacity.
All of the available seats were taken long before the event started, and the stairwells and aisles were instead packed with people working the event, including caterers, security guards, police officers, and a ragtag group of student volunteers. Whenever Pellegrini speaks, Italy seems to halt.
When She Swims, the crowd noise is Amplified by a Factor of ten.
The majority of the roughly 13,000 spectators at the world swimming championships are there only to cheer for Pellegrini by shouting her name, stamping their feet, and pounding their fists while she competes.
The tabloids and magazines love to publish juicy details about her private life because she is the greatest celebrity at these championships.
Pellegrini has been the focus of a love triangle around the pool and has recently developed a habit of abandoning races because to anxiety. The way she lives is more than a touch soap operatic.
On Sunday, Pellegrini broke the four-minute barrier in the 400-meter freestyle, making history in the process. After the fact, Rebecca Adlington’s Olympic gold medal win seemed like a complete fluke.
Adlington, after Winning bronze, remarked,
“The way that crowd was applauding for her tonight, it was absolutely unbelievable.” “In short, I’m just glad I was able to participate in the race. Pellegrini should have seized the opportunity. I will never forget it; it will be with me forever.”
The following day, on Wednesday, Pellegrini smashed her own world record to win the 200-meter freestyle event and the world championship. After finishing second in the 400m to Pellegrini, Joanne Jackson placed fourth.
She, like Adlington, was shocked and horrified by what she had witnessed. “I can’t even fathom how incredible that is. What she did tonight with her time was incredible. It felt like the time of a man.”
All three Ladies are around the same age.
On Wednesday, Pellegrini will turn 21. Jackson is 22 years old, while Adlington is only 20. However, Pellegrini appears to have been in existence much longer. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, she raced the 200-meter freestyle for Italy, where she finished in second place.
Pellegrini, who stands at 5 feet 9 inches tall and has a vintage Vogue cover girl style (she posed naked, spray painted gold, for Vanity Fair last year), has been a star ever since.
Her fiance Luca Marin is a former European champion in the 400-meter individual medley and a fellow Italian swimmer.
However, Marin was previously involved with Laure Manaudou of France, who happens to be one of Pellegrini’s main opponents, before the two began dating.
Pellegrini and Marin, like he and Manaudou before them, are frequently seen kissing by the pool. At the 2007 World Championships, Manaudou beat off Pellegrini to win the 200-meter event.
Manaudou left France in the same year because she “wanted to have his babies,” an apparent reference to Marin’s progeny. That plan fell through. She had a falling out with Marin, and a sex tape of the two of them was leaked to the Italian press on the day she won the gold medal.
A short time later, Pellegrini began dating Marin, and throughout their courtship, she and Manaudou traded places in the 200-meter world record.
At the beginning of the year, Manaudou announced that she would no longer be swimming because she had “lost the pleasure and will to swim.” In the end, Pellegrini was the recipient of both the man and the record. Still, she was in pain as well.
She ran the 400-meter event in Beijing and placed sixth after suffering a devastating loss to Adlington.
But later that day, she broke the world record in the preliminaries of the 200-meter freestyle and went on to win gold in the event, making up for her earlier loss in the final.
But Pellegrini had to stop racing twice in 2017 due to panic episodes. In November 2008, she initially crawled out of the pool, wheezing and heaving, to get medical help.
She was Eventually Identified as having Asthma and Instructed to begin Using an Inhaler.
The issue, however, remained unresolved. The following month, she had another pull-up during a 400-meter race.
She seemed especially nervous about the 400-meter dash. The presence of both sprinters who would swim strongly at the beginning and endurance swimmers who would attack later in the race left her feeling conflicted and unable to trust her own pace, she added.
Pellegrini has Visited a Sports Psychologist ever Since.
The 400-meter dash she won by a record margin last Sunday took place on the first day of the meet, which she found convenient. Saying, “Let’s take the tooth right soon, get rid of the discomfort.”
I think she accomplished that goal. The divas popularity has skyrocketed in Italy in the previous week.