EDITORIAL
Icons of Puglia on the world scene by Flavia Pankiewicz
A
s Fall comes round again, so does the time for taking stock and making plans. It’s the real beginning of a new year. And on looking around at both national and international events for inspiration to best face the challenges awaiting us, the choice falls unquestionably on Flavia Pennetta’s magnificent victory and Roberta Vinci’s astonishing performance in the US Open held in New York in mid-September. Moments of well-deserved glory for the whole of Italy and, since both the new queens of world class tennis come from here, for Puglia in particular.
As Vittorio Zucconi said in La Repubblica “the two tennis players from Puglia, daughters of that South that in literature and often in reality, is always talked of as a ‘Question’ and never as an ‘Answer’, have responded to the incredulity of 20 million Americans who play tennis”.
Pennetta triumphed wonderfully. But also Vinci’s win was not an obscure second placing, since she managed to knock out that awesome war-machine that is Serena Williams, the undisputed favourite of the whole competition. And then that all-Apulian final, Flavia vs. Roberta, unthinkable, unforgettable – it will remain forever in the hearts of Apulians all around the world.
Pennetta and Vinci, already icons elevated to mythical levels, are, on the international scene, the best ambassadors that Puglia could wish for. Icons inspiring us to perform impossible feats because they flew in the face of every prediction on the part of the usual arrogant experts. Icons that propose the image of a strong, positive, woman, full of talent: a winner, next to whom that of those brainless bimbos ever-present on our t.v. screens fade into nothingness. Icons of elegance, simplicity and beauty, underlined by their fierce hug after the final which awarded Flavia the victory and Roberta second place. A friendship which, even to the attentive eye of the t.v. camera looked untouched and untouchable by the result. A miracle within the miracle. Icons because they remind us that behind their ease and their smiles there is certainly a life of sacrifices, fatigue, privations of every kind, method and unyielding self-discipline. Brave, bravissime, unforgettable; these two “little sisters” from Puglia, by their achievements, have made these closing stages of 2015 memorable.
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