Alice D’Amato, Giorgia Villa, Martina Maggio, and Asia D’Amato
The Italian federation was the last to name its women’s Olympic team, announcing on Monday – the IOC’s deadline for finalizing team submissions – that Alice D’Amato, Asia D’Amato, Martina Maggio, and Giorgia Villa would be the four set to represent Italy in Tokyo, joining Vanessa Ferrari, who had previously won a nominative berth via the apparatus world cup series.
Ferrari was also considered for the core team, but while she has the potential to add higher scores to the team, she is undecided about whether she wants to put her body through an all-around competition and may instead focus just on winning a floor medal. Had she been selected to the team, her individual spot would have been reallocated to teammate Lara Mori, the world cup runner-up behind Ferrari on floor.
Villa and the D’Amato twins have been top contenders for the 2020 Olympic team since they made their international debuts as juniors at Gymnix in 2017. These three 2003-born Brixia gymnast, along with club teammate Elisa Iorio, appeared on a number of teams together throughout the quad, culminating with a bronze medal in the team final at world championships in 2019, where they were joined by Desiree Carofiglio to fill out the fifth spot.
It seemed that the “Brixia Four” were being groomed to all head to Tokyo together, but a late-stage injury to Iorio ultimately took her out of contention, with Maggio – another Brixia gymnast who stands out on beam and floor – slipping in seamlessly to take her place. Carofiglio, a strong all-arounder with notably good work on floor, was also initially in consideration for the Olympic team, but she too faced an injury that ended her dream.
Mori, the 2016 Olympic alternate, is a top floor worker who came so close to winning an individual berth until Ferrari got the upset in Doha, but the rest of her routines are not competitive enough for her to fill a team spot, so she was not in the team conversation.
The Italian men finished 13th in qualifications at world championships in 2019, missing a team spot by half a point. Both Ludovico Edalli and Marco Lodadio qualified individually, however, with Edalli earning a place in the all-around competition while Lodadio’s performance in the still rings final, where he won the silver medal, sealed his qualification.
The Italians will compete at national championships this weekend, and though I don’t think the results there will change anything related to the formation of the team, it could answer some questions pertaining to lineups for the four women in both qualifications and team finals.
Article by Lauren Hopkins