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Arianna Fontana responds in kind to Pietro Sighel, controversy remains heated

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Despite the medals won at Milan Cortina 2026, there remains no small amount of tension within the Italian short track team, as evidenced by Pietro Sighel&#8217s words toward Arianna Fontana and her laconic response after the individual silver won Thursday night. The new denizen of the overall Italian record for Olympic medals (equaled at 13 by fencer Edoardo Mangiarotti) returned to the controversy during a press point held at Casa Italia on Friday, taking a further stance.

“Yesterday I had not yet read, now I do– said the Valtellina champion -These are words that do not deserve my attention: if I had not wanted to be part of the team I would not have gone to Bormio to train, I would have stayed abroad’abroad”. Words destined to keep alive a controversy that seemed dormant before the Milan Cortina Games and that instead Sighel had rekindled in no uncertain terms, even going so far as to say during an interview with La Repubblica: “But who knows her, Arianna Fontana?”.

Francesco LuciveroAll the Azzurri medals in Milan Cortina 2026: photos

Francesca Lollobrigida won two golds in speed skating, in the women’s 3,000 and 5,000 meters.
Splendid gold also for the mixed relay of the short track (Confortola, Betti, Fontana, Nadalini, Sighel and Spechenhauser).
Marion Oberhofer and Andrea Vötter came out on top in the women’s luge.
Emanuel Rieder and Simon Kainzwaldner instead won the men’s event, again in the luge.

Federica Brignone gave the strongest emotions, winning the Olympic gold ten months after the serious accident.
Double podium position for the Azzurri in the men’s downhill: Giovanni Franzoni silver, Dominik Paris bronze.
Dorothea Wierer, Tommaso Giacomel, Lukas Hofer and Lisa Vittozzi took silver in the 4×6 km mixed biathlon.
Arianna Fontana also won an individual silver in the short track, in the 500 meters, equaling fencer Mangiarotti’s 13 Olympic medals.
Sofia Goggia won the bronze medal in the women’s downhill, capturing another Five Circles laurel.
Even Lucia Dalmasso celebrated a bronze, in snowboarding, finishing third in the women’s parallel giant.
In a crazy edition for the Italian luge, Dominik Fischnaller’s bronze in the men’s individual race is also recorded.
Bronze also for the Italian figure skating team (Rizzo, Grassl, Gutmann, Conti, Macii, Guignard and Fabbri).
Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner confirmed on the Olympic curling podium, winning bronze in the mixed doubles.
The'umpteenth Italian luge medal is the bronze in the mixed relay (Hofer, Vötter, Oberhofer, Fischnaller, Rieder and Kainzwaldner).

Sighel, who, among other things, had raised another fuss at the finish line of the victorious Italian relay, ending up the target of criticism especially on social media for crossing the finish line with her back turned, had spoken this way about Arianna Fontana: “She has been training abroad for eight years, she chose so. For sure, we are not a team with her, apart from the two and a half minutes on the track. The really good ones are our girls, who have been able to team up and grow even without her”.

Fontana had responded to a question about Sighel&#8217s words immediately after the 500-meter race that saw her win the silver medal, admitting that, at the time, she was not aware of what the Trentino skater had said. Less than twenty-four hours later came the counter-argument, which will not fail to raise further discussion.

The affair thus continues to move on a fine line, between extraordinary results on the rink and internal relations that seem difficult to recompose. The rift within the Italian short track team, despite its successes, is evident and it cannot be ruled out that the Ice Sports Federation will come to take an official position.

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