“Coming out? I would have been cowardly not to, but there is no girlfriend now»- Corriere.it

Irma, did you sleep? “Not only did I sleep, I had beautiful dreams.”

New Delhi outside, with its deafening contradictions («India is an absurd place, wonderful in some ways and terrible in others: I saw a little girl on the street dressed in rags, with a baby in her arms to look after. I thought about the Italy, how lucky I am to have been born there: it shouldn’t be taken for granted”), the inner peace inside.

At the age of 25, gold at the Boxing World Championship, conquered in the 57 kg category by beating the Kazakh Ibragimova 5-0, for Irma Head it is the milestone of a journey that began at the age of twelve in Torre Annunziata: «We don’t have many opportunities for young people. Either you come from a respectable and wealthy family, which makes you study, but if your parents are absent because they have to work from morning to night it’s difficult to take roads that take you far. I had master Lucio Zurlo, who replaced mine. I entered the gym, I immediately had fun, I never left. At 14, in the national team, the proposal arrived: do you want to move to Assisi? When you have nothing, everything is easier. Mum also kicked me in the ass: go, run away, if you can».

With bandaged hands under boxing glovesIrma Testa first of all punched herself (“As a teenager I didn’t like it: at first I didn’t want to take a shower with the others. But sport educates: by training your body, you start talking to it”), following the light of the Pellegrini and Vezzali lighthouses (“I grew up watching Federica and Valentina, two totems»), and then the history of her discipline.

She was the first Italian boxer at the Olympics (Rio 2016, aged 18), the first on the Olympic podium (bronze in Tokyo 2020), the first to score in all the events (third to win world championship gold after Alessia Mesiano and Simona Galassi), the first to come out: she told her mother Anna said when she was 15 (“I had never talked about these things with her, but she opened her thoughts and understood: you can fall in love with anyone”), to the rest of us as soon as she returned from Japan with the bronze around her neck (“A Olympic medal protects you from everything: I thought my coming out brought other girls with it, so it didn’t. Then there was the question of the Zan bill, the applause of the senators when it didn’t pass in Parliament… I watched with admiration for those who fought this battle to help the weakest: I wanted to expose myself. I would have felt like a coward if I hadn’t done it»). In short, the world of Irma tough is much wider than the perimeter of a ring.

What’s behind the New Delhi gold?
«There is the most beautiful emotion I could experience. I had already come close to the world title last year in Istanbul, when I was defeated in the final. I had a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted this medal at all costs but I was afraid: I remembered that bad feeling of not making it».

How did that change his thoughts, then?
«Last year I was insecure and intimidated, more careful not to make mistakes than to deliver blows. In the ring against the Kazakh I felt alone but also focused and determined like never before. Irma, I told myself, don’t worry and have fun. Mistakes teach: mentally, this time, I had a different approach».

Do you like being a pioneer?
«I like the idea of ​​having sown the seed of change, but there is still a long way to go: in Italy, women’s boxing wins more than men’s, which did not exist in Tokyo, yet we are talking about a discipline that is still considered for men. It’s not like that anymore. As for me, I’m the image woman of the movement but I’m not alone. Winning a gold medal is good for women’s sport in general”.

Why should mothers take their daughters to the gym instead of volleyball or fencing?
«In the meantime, it should always be the children who ask to be taken, perhaps after having tried various disciplines. Boxing is a complete sport: it trains the body and the mind. I was rebellious and restless, I never stood still: when I left the gym I was a different child. Boxing is a work on yourself: in the bag you don’t just hit the object, you’re actually punching all your problems, your fragility and insecurities. It’s a cathartic exercise. It’s a discipline.”

Still weighed down by stereotypes and preconceptions, though.
«Like women’s football: it makes your legs thick, it makes you homosexual… But when ever? My dream is to see gyms full of girls: before the age of 12 you don’t throw punches, but you enter a world full of rules and values. And it’s also false that you break your nose or cheekbones while boxing: there are far fewer injuries in a match than in other sports considered non-violent. Boxing makes you grow.”

While she won gold, her colleague Sirine Chaarabi, a 23-year-old from Caserta of Moroccan origin, won silver in the 52 kg. Sirine was born in Tunisia, has lived in Italy since she was 18 months old, had to write a letter to President Mattarella and wait until she was 21 to obtain citizenship and a passport, while for Mateo Retegui, an Argentinian with Canicattì’s grandfather, a rookie for Mancini’s national team , the bureaucracy has burned the times.
«I don’t want to speak for Sirine, who finally has Italian citizenship unlike her two sisters, one older and the other twin. It seems silly to me that you had her for sporting merits when she could have worn the blue shirt at 14: she is a great talent, I have always known her, she speaks dialect better than me. She did the retreats with us but then she couldn’t compete: I’ve seen her suffer for years. We denied a passport to an Italian, losing out on so many successes and medals. I find it very unfair that you Sirine could not have had the same path as me ».

Uphill path: “Ten years of sacrifices,” he said.
“I’d do it all over again. I left home when I was 14, I’m 25. In Assisi I got used to everything: rhythms, schedules, diet, workouts. I’m an athlete: my needs are few. In fact I feel great. But the distance was hard to digest: I grew up hundreds of kilometers away from a mother who is very happy for me today. You have found your way, you have become a better woman, she repeats to me. Here, for me this is the love of a mother: knowing how to understand what her children want and what is right for them, without interfering. Basically, this is the meaning of my journey».

Does the world title also count as an Olympic pass for the Paris 2024 Games?
«The World Boxing Federation and the International Olympic Committee are in conflict: the IOC does not like the management of the IBA and has taken away its authority to decide the Olympic boxing programme, entrusting it to an external commission. Moral: in theory, world gold should count as qualification for the Olympics, but in the absence of certainties, I’ll have to play the European Games in June».

For sports times, they are around the corner.
«In fact, there is no room for holidays. I come back from India, I go to Assisi to pick up my little dog, then I go down to Naples where, by dint of lunches and dinners with my mother and grandmother, I risk gaining 4-5 kilos every time. Then back to training.”

As a child, in Torre Annunziata, do you remember what dreams you had?
«I had neither dreams nor great ambitions nor posters of idols hanging in the bedroom. I joined the gym when I was 12: from that moment on, my goal has been to become a professional boxer and support myself with my sport. I was not a model student, very few females continue their studies in Torre Annunziata: many stop in middle school, when they already have a boyfriend who they will later marry and immediately have children, hoping that he will not end up arrested. It looks like a movie, but it’s all true.”

A point of reference, when she grew up, Frida Kahlo became.
«A woman I unconditionally admire: Frida had an accident, suffered unspeakable pains but never stopped painting. A woman painter, in Mexico, at the beginning of the last century: if she didn’t give up, why should I give up? I often think about it before a meeting».

What will Irma do with the 100,000 euro prize? Do you confirm that you will buy your house?
“But I never said that! Maybe I’ll buy a house for myself, in Assisi, where I’m renting and where I can still see myself for many years. AND mo’ who says to mum…?».

Without the question sounding itchy: is there a love?
«No, there is no love. There is not even a requirement: if it arrives, it arrives. I wouldn’t deprive myself of it. Of course we need to find the balance between Olympic preparation, whose dynamics I know by heart after two editions of the Games, and relationship. Love is unpredictable: it touches the heart like no workout, however grueling, can. True love is neither morbid nor toxic: it must add, not take away».

So this gold is dedicated to her.
«To me and to Emanuele Renzini, technical director of the national boxing team, who in ten years of work in Assisi was able to transform a little girl into a woman».

And did the first maestro Zurlo, 85 years old well-bred, hear him?
“We don’t talk often but we know that we are always there for each other. I tried to call him from New Delhi, he didn’t answer. I wrote to his son: dad can’t hear the phone, but he cried for you in front of the TV ».