Judo, Maria Centracchio recounts her battle: “I have fibromyalgia.”
Maria Centracchio spoke openly about the disease
With a lengthy post on her official Instagram profile, introduced by the phrase “A copper thread that becomes silk,” judoka Maria Centracchio, bronze medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, publicly revealed that she is suffering from fibromyalgia, thus deciding to tell about her battle.
“I have always relied on my physical performance,” explained the Molise athlete, born in 1994, “on my never getting tired, on regenerating myself after each blow: my resilience during matches has always been one of my greatest strengths, something I could have sworn I could count on indefinitely. Today, however, something has changed… For the past few months a persistent fatigue has taken over, a fatigue at every slightest effort, all accompanied by severe pains throughout my body and difficulty in serenely performing even the simplest daily activities. After the most varied visits, the most diverse opinions and the attached uncertainties, we came to name it all: fibromyalgia.”
“From now on I will have to live with this new way of ‘feeling’ of mine, I will have to learn to dose my efforts and direct my energies in the best way for my body,” the judoka added. There is something very funny about all this but, of all the stories I could tell myself, I like to think that my body has been so good that it has held on and moved the ‘needle of pain’ only after allowing me to achieve my dream; that it has been so masterful that it has taught me how to get back up after every fall, so that I can make sure that I will know how to face this challenge as well as I always have: with my head up and chest out.”
“I am lucky to have special people next to me, who support and sustain me at all times: my boyfriend and family first and foremost, my friends and my sports group; it is thanks to them that everything is easier and will be easier day after day. I know I am not alone in all this and it is beautiful,” she concluded.
