Sara Curtis breaks Federica Pellegrini’s record in the 100 style and sets new records in the 50 style at the Riccione Absolute Championships.

She is swimming into the future, because she just put a stop to the past by setting two starting blocks. Sara Curtis turned 18 as soon as she returned from the Paris Games, and at the Riccione Absolute in the space of a few hours she first erased the most iconic name in our swimming from the record books in the 100 style (on Tuesday she had touched up Pellegrini’s record in 53“01, by 17 hundredths), yesterday in the battery she touched up the 50 style record that already belonged to her, writing 24”52 on the scoreboard, and then lowered it again in the final to 24″43. A good sign in the year leading up to the world championships in Singapore.

“To have broken Federica Pellegrini’s record in the 100 style yesterday was beautiful, I have yet to achieve it. It was tiring to do the 50, I still had the adrenaline of the day before and regaining my concentration was not easy, but I did it,” he said after yesterday afternoon’s tricolor success, which came under the eyes of his parents, “for me they are a fundamental support, to them I owe everything for the sacrifices they have made, they have constantly helped me.”

Sara Curtis is yet another living example of the new generation of Italian champions: born in Savigliano in the province of Cuneo, her skin is that of her mother Helen, a Nigerian who used to practice track and field, while her father Vincenzo is a former cyclist. But her grandparents Paride and Liliana, who predicted her Olympic future, already crowned in Paris, also played an important role in this story.

An Esercito athlete trained by Thomas Maggiora, she set records under the eyes of Greg Paltrinieri in Riccione as a spectator, but her idol is the other Emilian, the Bolognese ‘bomber’ Marco Orsi. Her trophy case is already full of all the metals between Europeans and World Juniors, and in Paris she got an eighth place with the relay, but it is clear that the Azzurri expedition that has Los Angeles 2028 as its goal, where Sara will be 22 years old, is betting heavily on her.

Yesterday to her and to the other very young Alessandra Mao, who won the 200 style at the age of 14, came social compliments from Pellegrini herself: “To see women’s fast freestyle swimming travel so high is really beautiful!!! Well done girls!!!”

The future will probably take Sara to the United States: this year she will graduate from the technical economic and tourist institute, then she should go to study psychology at the University of Virginia, where she will no longer have the problem of splitting her time between Savigliano and Cuneo to find a 50-meter pool.

Like Pellegrini, Sara was also precocious in the water, debuting in competitions when she was six years old: she recounted that when they threw her into the water she started laughing, that the afro braids she keeps under her cap are the work of her mother or aunt, and she does not hide her passion for poetry, some of which she writes in person. Like when she goes into the water.