The whole world saw the Italian flag raised by Crabbinieri for the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina winter games. In Cortina, alongside these members of the Italian national gendarmerie, stood out the four standard bearers, great winning athletes of the 4 x 10 relay in Turin who our transalpine neighbors had chosen to represent them and… A little man of 11 years old.
“Both Riccardo and I were very moved! And I was moved to tears when I saw him on stage singing the Italian anthem,” his mother, Sole, tells us in Italian and via WhatsApp the day after this incredible evening. She attaches a smiley face with big eyes seeming to hold back tears.
Because the story of Riccardo, this schoolboy abandoned in the snow by a bus driver on January 27 while he was returning home aboard line 30 linking Cortina to Calalzo (Belluno) has gone around the world. He covered the 6 km that connects his college to his casa on foot and under the snow had arrived chilled and soaked. All this because ticket prices had been multiplied by four during the winter games. And that the little boy was not equipped with the special Olympics ticket.
He greeted the crowd with a smile.
This week we found him at his home in Volo di Cadore with his mother, Sole. She told us about the anguish of not seeing him return, her son’s hypothermia… The driver and the company ended up apologizing. Ticket prices had returned to normal. The Olympic committee had promised to bring the boy to the opening ceremony, where he was to play a “symbolic role”. He was served.
The young boy, shy, when he was questioned at home found himself in the living room of more than 7 million viewers for the ceremony broadcast on television. He greeted the crowd with a smile, and images of this event went around the world.
In Milan, after Mariah Carey’s performance singing “Nel blu, dipinto, di blu” in Italian, models paraded in outfits designed by Giorgio Armani, the most famous of them Vittoria Ceretti transmitted the Italian flag to the Carabinieri in Milan so that they could hoist “Il Tricolore”, green, white, red. In Cortina, the 4 x 10 meter relay team which won gold at the 2006 Turin Olympic Games (Fulvio Valbusa, Christian Zorzi, Giorgio Di Centa and Pietro Piller Cottrer) did the same. Riccardo at their side.
“Very honored to be there with his idols”
The last-minute guest wore the same “elegant outfit”, gray jacket, pants and white hat, as the four tall skiers who accompanied him. “These clothes were chosen by the Olympic staff,” reports Sole. Far from everyday jeans and sneakers, the uniform of schoolchildren in Italy and around the world. No worries for the schoolboy, our real star of the ceremony, because he was “very honored to be there with his idols”, confides his mother.
“He knew their name but never saw them in competition,” reports his mama. And for good reason, he is too young to have been able to watch their greatest feat won exactly twenty years ago, before he was born.
For the ceremony, reconciled with the bus company, the family had chosen public transport? “We went there by car,” the Italian replied with a hilarious smiley face that made us cry with laughter.
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