Sara Simeoni, theft at home: stolen the Olympic gold medal from Moscow ’80

It couldn’t hurt more than that. Sara Simeoni was the victim of a burglary at home. And in the loot of the criminals, who broke into her apartment in Rivoli Veronese, ended up the most precious of her memories of her sporting life, a real piece of Italian sporting history. In fact, she had the gold medal won at the 1980 Moscow Olympics in the high jump stolen from her.

Simeoni was not at home when the fact occurred: the former Italian athletics star, in fact, was in Scandiano, where he had just presented his book “A life up high”, an autobiographical story in which obviously the triumph of 1980 has a central role. Initially Simeoni feared that he had also lost the other two Olympic medals collected in his career, namely the silver won in Montreal in 1976 and in 1984 in Los Angeles, before and after the Russian triumph. But then, sorting out the confusion generated by the thieves’ violation, he discovered that the two heirlooms were still at the house. Maybe she was deluded that she could find even the most precious one, but evidently the gold didn’t escape the thieves. And slowly, as the minutes went by, she and her husband understood that the Moscow medal will probably remain only in the memories and photos of those magical days.