«Everything can change in an instant because judo is falling and getting up. Not once, but six, seven, a thousand times ». As per the Japanese proverb, quoted by Maria Centracchio, the judoka from Isernia who managed to win a medal at the last Olympics (the first individual ever for Molise).
The extraordinary adventure of the Molise woman has become a book entitled “Fall seven times, get up eight” and was written by the journalist Antonino Morici, author of La Gazzetta dello Sport, for Volturnia Edizioni. Centracchio has chosen a discipline that seems the metaphor of life: the story of Maria, Olympic bronze medalist in the 63 kg in Tokyo, was in fact full of obstacles. Also for this reason, among the forty medals won by Italy in Japan, the one won by the athlete from Isernia is among the most significant. Because Mary, despite adversity, never gave up. You can recover from Covid and mononucleosis, you can overcome injuries to the ligaments of the knee and ribs, you can recover from an elbow surgery and in the end be able to take part in the most important sporting event in the world. More: getting on the Olympic podium, after the change of category, last in the list of qualified for the Games. A medal obtained as a true outsider.
Not bad for someone they called an athlete without talent, but who proved to have a lot of heart and character, fortified in the family gym, the place where “the Centracchio” grew up on bread and judo. To testify in the preface is the friend and colleague Odette Giuffrida, one of the most successful Italian judoka ever, also on the third step of the podium in Tokyo.
But how did she manage to overcome such bad luck? At one point Maria talks about her “Molise genetics, that inexplicable ability of my body to regenerate itself in a very short time, a bit like my region, so small but proud and tenacious, is used to doing”. And who knows how to assert himself, as he first told reporters in Tokyo and then in the book: «Because Molise exists and leads strongly. I said so, instinctively. And I almost laugh at it because I understand that it is a perfect phrase for the wonderful land that has allowed me to be who I am ». That is “a girl attached to her region of origin and with a way of expressing herself on the mat that is more tactical and physical than purely technical”.
The happy ending prevails over the difficulties encountered in her career by a girl from a southern Italian who fights and does her honor in the temple of judo.
