Federica Pellegrini (ITA) has already made clear to the Italian press her ambitions for the current Olympic cycle: to get to her shiny suit times come London 2012. The Italian star and Olympic 200m free champion in Beijing four years after taking silver in Athens, acknowledges that it won't be easy but she relishes the challenge and states clearly to Gazzetta dello Sport today that she has "always been in favour of abolition" of the shiny suits which her late coach and mentor Alberto Castagnetti dubbed "technological doping" from the outset.
Pellegrini gets her competitive 2010 underway today at the Berlin Arena ISM meet in Germany, where over the course of the next three days she will race 100, 200, 400 and 800m freestyle.
She faces the coming season "With a great desire to have fun. Don't ask me more. It will serve to get me a little bit away from the repetitiveness of training. Also because I trained all winter only in short-course, except for the two weeks I was at an American college." Berlin, she tells the leading sports paper is "just a nice test to see my condition at this point of the season."
And that is also because the 'Superbody' suit ended up in the attic? asks the reporter. "A nice change. I have always been in favor of abolition. For a while, there will be no more stratospheric times, but the swimming will be all the more true.
On whether she will carry the 100m and 800m to London 2012, Pellegrini says that while she had thought about those events with serious intention, it had not yet been decided whether they would feature in an Olympic campaign. For now, they would serve "to amuse me".
She will test her 800m strength at Italian trials in Riccione in April for the European Championships this summer with a view to a possible showdown with Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington and teammates Jo Jackson and Jazz Carlin, the three most likely candidates to represent Britain in Budapest this August.
Pellegrini, now coached by Stefano Morini, who was Castagnetti's assistant, has set aside all appearance and TV shows to get on with the business of training hard. Asked if she believed Castagnetti would be watching her from above, Pellegrini says: "Yes, I figure he's there with a stopwatch in hand. And I still really need some of his advice." It was Castagnetti's advice that turned Pellegrini round between a fifth place in 400m free Olympic final in which she made a tactical error to victoy in the 200m days later.
Alongside Pellegrini in Berlin are Italian teamsters Chiara Boggiatto, Ilaria Scarcella, Francesca Segat, Emiliano Brembilla, Federico Colbertaldo, Massimiliano Rosolino, Mirco di Tora, Pellegrini's boyfriend Luca Marin, Tommaso Romani und Alessandro Terrin.
Meanwhile, other big names of 2009 about to set out racing in textile 2010 include, for the next three days, Fred Bousquet (FRA), who returns to the Montpellier haunt of his 50m shiny suit world record of last year. He will race 50m and 100m free and 'fly alongside teammates of coach Maxime Cornillier's Marseille squad at the Montpellier meet. Among others in action are Fabien Gilot, Gregory Mallet and Diane Bui Duyet. The Marseilles crew will then race again the following weekend, at a meet in Nancy.
