Italy has won its third Olympic medal in history, 12 years after Carolina Kostner. Name by name, who are the protagonists of this achievement?

Until this evening, Italy had won two Olympic bronze medals in skating: Fusar Poli-Margaglio in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Carolina Kostner in Sochi in 2014. Twelve years later, here is the third in the team competition. We are third after the United States and Japan, the world’s superpowers. But who are Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri, the dance couple, Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii, the artistic couple, Lara Naki Gutmann, our best skater, Daniel Grassl and Matteo Rizzo, on the ice between Saturday and Sunday for the men’s event?

Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri competed on Saturday evening, not on this bronze Sunday, but they were equally important. In dance, 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 other half on the ice, and… one thing led to another. Today, they are partners in life and in competition. Together, they have been European champions three times and a month ago they took European silver in Sheffield. They are experienced, elegant, a guarantee. Their second place on Saturday evening was the best Italian result ever in this team competition. Ah, tomorrow they will be back on the ice for rhythmic dance, the first half of their competition: they will skate to the music of the Backstreet Boys.

conti-macii—  A good plot for a TV series. Sara and Niccolò got engaged in 2018, started skating together in 2019, and broke up in 2023. They went through a difficult time then, but today they have a mutual understanding as exes. “The psychologist saves us,” they have said over the years. Niccolò explains: “When we broke up, there was a lot of drama on the rink, but now we have a good friendship. Sara will be at my wedding on August 29.” She will be going with Tim Dieck, her new boyfriend, a German-born skater who competes for Spain. Conti and Macii are elegant and close on the rink. She is 25 years old and comes from Capannelle, a hamlet of Zanica, in the province of Bergamo. He is 30 years old and comes from Città Studi, Milan, on the same metro line as the Forum, where he will 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 counts here is willpower: on December 28, Sara sprained the collateral ligament in her right knee, was out of action for about twenty days, missed the European Championships but came back, ready as ever. In the free program, they skate to the notes of Caruso, Sara in a dress reminiscent of the sea, Niccolò representing the moon. A love distant in space, as theirs is distant in time.

gutmann—  Lara Naki Gutmann was the pleasant surprise of the first part of the competition: third in the short program. Those who discovered her here in Milan wonder if “Naki” is her middle name or first surname and… first guess is right: it is a Ghanaian name meaning “firstborn.” Her parents chose it in honor of a friend who passed away during pregnancy. Gutmann is in her thirties, 23 years old, and has a simple, never vulgar, neoclassical elegance. The Olympics are part of her history: “I started because I saw the 2006 Turin Olympics,” she said. “I fell in love with ice skating; it seemed to me that the skaters were flying.” The best result of her career is the bronze medal at the European Championships in January, but she is definitely on the rise. She is studying sports science and is beginning to build her persona. 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 film “Jaws,” wearing a dress that represents the sea, with gray shades to evoke the gills and teeth marks of a shark. Her fans, won over, have started calling her SharkNaki, Naki the shark.

Rizzo—  The surprise man. Rizzo is the skater who, with an excellent performance, won Italy the bronze medal: in his team selection, he benched Daniel Grassl, who had skated in the short program. An interesting rivalry: Grassl has a more complex program, but Rizzo did 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 started him on a career that blossomed late. Anything else? He is very passionate about motorsports and has a simulator at home that he uses to play against his friends for hours. He says that his favorite way to relax is on the sofa and that he has watched “Game of Thrones” three times.

grassl—  Daniel Grassl did not take to the ice on the bronze medal Sunday, but he still made his mark with his short program on Saturday. Born in Merano, South Tyrol, in 2002, Grassl was the silver medalist at the 2022 European Figure Skating Championships. Blond, talented, and not always consistent, he is curiously very famous in Japan. “It all started after my first Junior World Cup competition. I was 13 years old and I was playing Charlie Chaplin, who they adore in Japan,” he told SportWeek. “Then being blond helped a lot, as it’s a rarity there…” As a child, Grassl wanted to be an actor, soccer player, tennis player, hockey player, then he chose skating… although he still has a dream of becoming a director or screenwriter in the future. He speaks Italian, German, English, and Spanish, understands Russian, and is very attached to his dog Kori, whom he got thanks to… skating: his parents promised him the dog if he completed a quadruple Lutz. Done.