the dead volleyball players in Istanbul – Corriere.it

It was May 29, 2012, also in Istanbul. A fishing boat found the lifeless body of Giulia Albini in the Bosphorus, also a volleyball player like Julia Ituma, the young opposite of Igor Gorgonzola Novara found dead at dawn today in front of the hotel where she was staying with the team after the Champions League semi-final played last night. Two days earlier, the 30-year-old who, in addition to playing, was also a physiotherapist in Switzerland, had boarded a direct flight to the Turkish city and had rented a car. That very car was found near the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge over the Bosphorus, from where the girl had jumped from 70 meters around half past one in the night. At the roots of the gesture, probably, a disappointment of love for the end of the story with an Italian coach who coached in Turkey.

Promotion to A2

At the time, Albini was playing in Ornavasso, in Piedmont, with whom he had won promotion to Serie A2. Previously she had also worn the Novara shirt, so much so that Sister Giovanna Saporiti, the president of the club where Ituma also played, in the days following the tragedy told of a sensitive, sweet, jovial girl, full of questions about life but serene. We are baffled – continued the president – ​​and with Giulia’s former companions we had a long cry in the locker room. We all still have in our eyes a player eager to win, tireless in training and generous with others.

The passion for beach volleyball

A few months earlier, Albini had returned to support the team in the promotion playoffs, and she was as usual: smiling, enthusiastic about her work as a physiotherapist in Switzerland and about volleyball, which was her life. She spent the summer on the beach volleyball court and planned vacations, I know she had a partner but she didn’t tell anyone that she was going to Istanbul. When the news arrived we thought it was an accident. But to a suicide, never.