Italy has won the third Olympic medal in its history, 12 years after Carolina Kostner’s victory. One by one, here are the stars behind this achievement

Until tonight, Italian figure skating had won two Olympic bronze medals: Fusar Poli-Margaglio at Salt Lake City 2002, and Carolina Kostner at Sochi 2014. Twelve years later, here comes the third in the team event. We’re third behind the United States and Japan, the world’s superpowers. But who are Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri, the ice dance pair; Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii, the figure skating pair; Lara Naki Gutmann, our top female skater; and Daniel Grassl and Matteo Rizzo, who took to the ice between Saturday and Sunday for the men’s event?

Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri competed on Saturday night—not on this “bronze Sunday”—but they were just as important. In ice dancing, they are by far the leading Italian pair. Charlène was born in France and has been competing for Italy since 2010; Marco is from Milan. In 2010, they were both without partners, so they signed up for “Partner Search,” a website where skaters look for their ice partner, and… one thing led to another. Today they’re partners in life and on the ice. Together, they’ve been European champions three times, and a month ago they won silver at the European Championships in Sheffield. They’re experienced, elegant, and a sure bet. Their second-place finish on Saturday night was the best-ever result for an Italian team in this team competition. Oh, and tomorrow they’ll be back on the ice for the rhythm dance, the first half of their routine: they’ll skate to music by the Backstreet Boys.

conti-macii—  It’s a good plot for a TV series. Sara and Niccolò got engaged in 2018, started skating together in 2019, and broke up in 2023. At the time, they went through a rough patch, but today they share a close bond as exes. “The therapist saved us,” they’ve said over the years. Niccolò explains: “When we broke up, things got heated on the ice, but now we share a beautiful friendship. Sara will be at my wedding on August 29.” She’ll be there with Tim Dieck, her new fiancé—a German-born skater who competes for Spain. On the rink, Conti and Macii are elegant and in sync. She’s 25 and from Capannelle, a hamlet of Zanica, in Bergamo. He’s 30 and from Milan’s Città Studi neighborhood, on the same subway line as the Forum, where he’ll compete in the most important race of his life. They were the first Italians ever to win the European title (2023) and the first to win a world medal (2023 and 2025), but what matters most here is their willpower: On December 28, Sara sprained the collateral ligament in her right knee; she was sidelined for about twenty days, missed the European Championships, but came back, ready as always. In the free program, they skate to the music of Caruso, with Sara wearing a costume that evokes the sea and Niccolò representing the moon. A love distant in space, just as theirs is distant in time.

gutmann—  Lara Naki Gutmann was the pleasant surprise of the first half of the competition: third in the short program. Those who discovered her here in Milan wonder if “Naki” is her middle name or her first surname—and… the first guess is correct: it’s a Ghanaian name meaning “firstborn.” Her parents chose it in honor of a friend who passed away during her mother’s pregnancy. Gutmann is from Trentino; she’s 23 years old and possesses a neoclassical elegance—simple, never vulgar. The Olympics are part of her story: “I started because I watched the 2006 Turin Olympics,” she said. “I fell in love with the ice; it seemed to me that the skaters were flying.” Her best career result is the bronze medal at the European Championships in January, but she’s definitely improving; she’s studying sports science and is beginning to establish her own identity. After the short program, she appeared at interviews with Matoldo, a stuffed mole—the favorite stuffed animal of Matilda Ferrari, a skater from Trentino who was killed by a concrete mixer at a school bus stop on September 15. “Having Matilda with me in those moments was wonderful,” said Lara Naki. Tonight she will skate to the soundtrack of the movie *Jaws*, wearing a costume representing the sea, with some gray shades to evoke the shark’s gills and tooth marks. Her fans, now completely won over, have started calling her SharkNaki, Naki the shark.

Rizzo—  The surprise contender. Rizzo is the skater who, with an excellent performance, secured the bronze medal for Italy: in his lineup decisions, he benched Daniel Grassl, who had skated in the short program. An interesting rivalry: Grassl has a more complex program, but Rizzo performed better at the European Championships in January, where he took silver. Matteo, 27, was born in Rome but knows Milan very well: he has lived in Sesto San Giovanni for years. His parents, Brunilde Bianchi and Valter Rizzo, were a pair of ice dancers and introduced him to a career that blossomed late. Anything else? He’s very passionate about cars and has a simulator at home that he uses to race against friends for hours. He says his go-to way to relax is the couch and mentions that he’s watched “Game of Thrones” three times.

grassl—  Daniel Grassl didn’t take to the ice on the bronze medal Sunday, but he still contributed his part with Saturday’s short program. Born in Merano, South Tyrol, in 2002, Grassl won a silver medal at the 2022 European Figure Skating Championships. Blond, talented, and not always consistent, he is, curiously enough, very famous in Japan. “It all started after my first Junior World Cup competition; I was 13 and was portraying Charlie Chaplin, whom they adore in Japan,” he told SportWeek. “Being blond also helped a lot—it’s a rarity over there…” As a child, Grassl wanted to be an actor, a soccer player, a tennis player, and a hockey player; then he chose figure skating… though he still harbors a dream of becoming a director or screenwriter one day. He speaks Italian, German, English, and Spanish, understands Russian, and is very close to his dog Kori, whom he got thanks to… figure skating: his parents had promised him the dog if he landed a quadruple Lutz. He did it.