“With the 100,000 euro premium, I can buy a house” – Corriere.it

A gold in its own way. Elegant and cerebral. A head game and a dance in the ring. Because “who knows how to think, who knows how to dance, better than a woman?”.

Irma Testa in the New Delhi arena used the best version of herself — technique, mobility, intelligence — to become world champion in the 57 kg category. She beat Kazakh Karina Ibragimova on points (unanimous verdict).

The match was fought, «not spectacular, a technical final and Irma is very good in this», comments Patrizio Oliva, the unforgettable WBA world champion in the super lightweight, the ideal conditions to let the butterfly fly (“butterfly” is the nickname chance): it could only end up like this, with this gold around my neck, a pride to dust (“I’m proud of myself and my strength, these are the results when you work well, I’m closed in on myself and at the center of ‘Assisi, I haven’t seen anyone again”) and, not irrelevant detail, 100 thousand euro prize. «I wanted to help my family, my mother who worked a lot, maybe now I can buy a house».

These are the thoughts that arrive later, when fatigue settles on the muscles (“inside I’m over the moon, outside I look dead, I still have to process”) and we begin to put the enterprise into perspective. At the moment, as soon as she got out of the ring, an unfiltered joy had prevailed: «I am very happy, I have been working for years, years, years... I sacrificed all my adolescence and my life, but if these are the results I would like to do it for another twenty years!».

An unstoppable climb, each step a first time: first Italian boxer to participate in an Olympics (Rio 2016), first medal at the Games (bronze in Tokyo 2020), first even to come out, because otherwise, he explained, “felt cowardly”. Now hers her first world title. «I dedicate it to the sacrifices I’ve made and to maestro Emanuele Renzini who has put up with me for so many years, and has always believed in it even when I was a c…». You would now be missing the most precious medal in Paris: the pass will be torn up in June at the European Games. «I want to work harder to not only be world champion, I want to be everything now»the battle cry.

He has come a long way girl who discovered a vocation in the gym of the master Lucio Zurlo and at 14 she left everything (“But it’s easier when you have nothing,” she told Corriere) with the encouragement of her family who supported her in getting out of Torre Annunziata and accepting her destiny as a trailblazer.

Without Irma, maybe it wouldn’t even exist Sirine Chaarabi, 23 years old, from Caserta of Tunisian origins, who won silver in the 52 kg category (and 50 thousand euros «which make the difference for me»), beaten in the final by the Chinese Wu Yu, and she’s a little excited: «A great emotion , and a little bitterness in the mouth», she says, despite the fact that for the director Renzini she has «burned the stages of her sporting career». The same cannot be said about obtaining citizenship: Sirine only spent the first 18 months in Tunisia, but she did not become Italian until she was 21 and she could not compete for the national team.
Now she has the tricolor, a medal around her neck and the coronation of Irma. “There have never been two Italians in the world final”, and this, of all, is perhaps the greatest satisfaction.