Short track, Arianna Fontana with Italy at World Championships

Short track, world

The last and most important event of the short track season is just around the corner. Friday in Beijing, China, kicks off the three-day World Championships.

After the excellent results collected in the ISU World Tour circuit, the Italian national team led by High Performance Director Kenan Gouadec, head coach Maggie Qi and coaches Derrick Campbell and Nicola Rodigari approaches the rainbow event with important ambitions and great motivation.

Ten Italian athletes have been summoned: Chiara Betti (Fiamme Gialle), Elisa Confortola (Fiamme Oro), Arianna Fontana (Icelab), Gloria Ioriatti (Fiamme Oro) and Arianna Sighel (Fiamme Oro) on the women’s side, Mattia Antonioli (C.S. Esercito), Thomas Nadalini (Fiamme Oro), Lorenzo Previtali (Fiamme Oro), Pietro Sighel (Fiamme Gialle) and Luca Spechenhauser (C.S. Carabinieri) on the men’s side.

Three tricolor skaters will compete in each individual distance in the women’s while in the men’s there will be three in the 1,000 meters and two in the 500 and 1,500.

“The team arrives ready for these World Championships that close our pre-Olympic season – explains Kenan Gouadec -. After the last World Tour stage in Milan we managed to manage the preparation as planned and we will continue so until Friday. We want to confirm the three distance places at the women’s level and recover the ones at the men’s level that we are now missing ahead of next season. The goal then at the medal level è to perform with the relays, all three of which have a chance to be on the podium, and to bring as many athletes as possible to the finals of the individual distances, in line with what we have done so far in the season“.

Fridayì kicks off in the morning with the qualifying day.