For several days the Olympic champions fell in Budapest, most going out in the early rounds, a few reaching the final block. Bellandi was aware of the trend but remained steadfast, glued to her preparation, her coach’s words and her goal. It was a magnificent outcome for the Italian, impressive beyond expectation.
Fiamme Gialle is a professional team within the Italian military police. Alice is proud to be a member of their judo team, “We don’t have a lot of people to train with but the support is so good. I can’t thank them enough for investing in the whole process. It takes a lot of moving around. We aren’t like France or Japan with regard to numbers and so this programme costs. We have to move and Fiamme Gialle do everything for us.
Susy Scutto, coach Antonio Ciano and me are all together. Actually, when I arrived at the club, Antonio was still an athlete. We did and still do everything in house. Our physical coach is there with us, the psychologist too. None of it is easy but we all feel there is real possibility here. The responsibility belongs to the coach and athlete. In general the world behaves like everyone is on the boat if we win but if we lose it’s our singular fault, so it’s a heavy burden. But here, we take the correct amount of responsibility for the wins and the losses."
"What I learned the most in the process, and with help from the mental coach, is to trust my feelings.” This was an important realisation for Alice. What most onlookers don’t realise is that the worlds was her first competition since the Olympic Games. Coach Ciano, at first, wanted her to compete before arriving in Budapest but he learned to trust Alice’s gut too.
“Sometimes, said Alice, “I have doubts heading into competition but I decided to do this worlds like this, my way, having faith in how I felt. I asked everyone around me to not put pressure on me and I said I would come back when I’m ready. I watched the Europeans and wanted to be there and that was when I knew it was time to come back."
"Antonio planned maybe two or three competitions before the World Championships but I didn’t want to do them. It was a really risky choice. I knew it could be great or a big mistake. I trusted my feelings though and enjoyed it.
Budapest wasn’t just about the medal; it was also to understand my enjoyment, my feelings on the mat. After the Games, it was sometimes scary, not necessarily bad, just very different.
Antonio is the right coach for me. It comes from a sad story as we had an argument many years ago and we didn’t really talk but before the Tokyo Games, I was cutting weight for an event and he came to me, even though we weren’t speaking. He asked how I was and I felt I needed to apologise for our disagreement. After Tokyo we really started to build the relationship, from nothing. It’s special because we had to build it from an intention to be better, to leave behind our struggles. In the end, I followed him and worked and tried to keep my mouth shut!"
"At every competition and training session after Tokyo, we were trying to understand each other. I need someone who really listens and knows me, who can manage my emotions. Sometimes I have to do what I don’t want but I also needed someone who could compromise for and with me when it was right to do so. He knows that when I have fear, when I underestimate myself, I can fight and give myself power from knowing that I am really ready, well prepared. In the beginning he tried to tell me fear is not a word for us but now we can use this word to help us. He trusts our work and we trust each other. His faith in me has been amazing.“
Knowing that her fellow Olympic champions had bowed out before her fight day, but with the strength of her belief in her club, coach and preparation, the win in Budapest was a huge moment of confirmation.
“The morning after, well that was a weird feeling. I went there trying to not think it was a worlds, just the first one back, to see how I am and how my feelings were, how accurate I was. I’m still checking what I need to improve so I will take time to process this championship and the result and how we found ourselves here.
I think Antonio managed the situation perfectly in the final. I didn’t throw from a plan. What I was doing by myself during the fight wasn’t correct against Olek and so he gave me what I needed to turn the final around.” A sasae-tsuri-komi-ashi, deep into golden score, earned the gold medal. “That throw was not planned but it came. In my mind I knew the final was not hard; it should have been easy. But I felt so horrible in my body during the fight that I had to have true faith in what could be done not what I planned to do. That last clean attack came from faith. I learned from the Games that there is a big part we can control but some things are not controllable and so we must have faith in ourselves and our work.”
Still full of humility and emotion, Alice Bellandi has done the almost impossible by becoming one of the greatest names in the modern era of judo, consecutive Olympic and world titles the evidence of her greatness. Her message is to do the work and trust herself; a clear and positive message, applicable to all life even beyond the arena.
