On the 15th of August 2026, at the European Athletics Championships, our fellow Bocconi student Sofia Fiorini won the Gold Medal for the Marathon in race walking, setting the world record in the meantime. Since Tra i Leoni managed to reach out and contact our champion, I had the pleasure to interview her as soon as the semester started again.
After this impressive achievement everyone in Italy knows your name, and a number of newspaper articles have reported the same basic information about you. Beyond these superficial portraits of you as an athlete, who is Sofia?
I’m a very curious woman, at times almost hyperactive. I grew up in a small village in rural Tuscany, but I always wanted to move to Milan where I can embrace the chaos of the city. I really feel like I have found the perfect environment for me.
Sport has made me a tireless person, and I really cannot be idle for too long. That’s why I have several passions to fill my time. I truly enjoy crafts, but my favourite hobby is certainly Sudoku. And from that I developed a strong interest in numbers and numerology.
I love creating collages, especially after one of my travels. I just came back from Japan, which was the 50th country I have visited. As soon as I return home from a trip I start printing hundreds of pictures, and I use them to create scrapbooks. I love always doing things: I really cannot stay idle at all.
All these activities sound a lot of fun, but only one has made you European champion: race walking. What brought you to this specific discipline? Did you choose it deliberately or was it somewhat by chance?
My parents were very sporty themselves, and they brought me up to be one as well. Among the many sports that I tried as a little girl, I really liked swimming and athletics, but between the two I ended up choosing the latter. You see, I have always loved being outdoors, and athletics was perfect for that. I have been involved in athletics since I was four years old, trying different disciplines throughout the years. I was good at running, and that’s what I practised until 2013. During a competition that year, I had to choose three races, and my third pick was race walking, not because I had ever tried it before, but because no one was doing it that day! I ended up winning that 600-metres race, and from then on, I realised that I wanted to be a race walker.
The only problem was that in my home province of Arezzo there was no one practising race walking at any level. I started out alone for some time, but race walking is a rather technical discipline, and I needed some real support from specialist coaches. Finally, during my first year of high school, I started to train in Livorno, which is over three hours’ drive from my home. Thankfully, my father could drive me twice a week, and there I found the right people and structures to train properly.
After a few years you decided to move: why did you end up choosing Milan and Bocconi University for your degree?
I have been in love with Milan since I was very young: I used to come here for Inter Milan football games, and that passion never faded. So, before I even chose the programme, I had already decided to move to Milan. Another major factor was the training ground of Sesto San Giovanni: there I found an amazing group of athletes, some of whom had already competed at the Olympic Games. Working with them has been a constant challenge and source of motivation, which helped me throughout the last two years.
On the academic level I never felt particularly drawn to any subject, but studying economics and management felt like my best option, because it was broad enough to keep my option open for the future. And since I’ve always been very demanding of myself, I couldn’t settle for anything less than Bocconi.
As all our fellow students know very well, Bocconi is a very demanding university. How do you manage to balance your life between studying and training, both of which must take up a great deal of time?
Race walkers train twice every day of the week, resting only on Sunday. That means more than ten training session per week. So yeah, almost all of my time is taken up by training. During the three years that I have spent here in Milan, things have changed for me: initially I definitely focused more on the academic side. Even though I had already joined the national athletics team, I had not yet reached my current level and I trained far less. So I could attend all classes and spend much more time on campus.
During my second year, I shifted my attention more towards training, especially as the European Athletics Championships approached. Now, thanks to the fact that many courses do not require mandatory attendance, I select the classes I want to attend and organise my schedule around them. Moreover, not every moment of the year is the same: right now, we are in the off-season, and I can concentrate more on studying compared to the competition season.
Apart from not requiring strict attendance, how does the University support you in your athletic career?
Well, some new form of support might be coming up soon, after I meet with the University next week. For the first two years, I was in the Sport Talents Program, which grants me an additional three years to complete my bachelor’s degree without incurring any extra fee, provided that I earn at least 30 credits every year. This way I can spread my courses over six years instead of just three. This program also grants me access to the sport centre, so overall the University has been very helpfulfor my athletic career. And as I said, some new support might be coming this year after my recent results.
In general, I hope that I will not be alone in this new program. There needs to be a nationwide change in all universities in Italy regarding how student-athletes are supported, and this shouldn’t be only limited to athletes competing at European or National level. Keeping up with academic duties and training schedules is very hard, and thousands of other young talents might benefit from a model such as the American one, where sport and education go hand in hand. I really hope Bocconi will become the first Italian university to start such a program.
You are just 22 years old, but already you have achieved such an amazing result at the European Athletics Championships, winning a gold medal in the race walking marathon and setting the world record in this discipline. How did you react to that, and what are your plans for the future?
My life changed drastically: I am generally a shy person and the huge wave of affection and attention that followed the race was truly unexpected. I’m in the realisation phase, and I’m trying to manage the new situation as best as I can. I was already used to the sacrifices that come with being an athlete, but now I have to adapt to this new stage of my career.
When it comes to my future, I have some hopes and dreams in mind, as we all do. On the academic side I intend to complete CLEAM in the coming years, using the three extra years that Bocconi grants me. After my bachelor’s degree I would like to find a master’s programme in sport management, in order to continue studying in this field and to finally combine it with my sporting career.
The coming years will also be crucial for my athletic career, obviously. The European Championships felt like my first step into the real world of athletics, after competing for years at youth level. The next two years will be especially important, with two major events before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In May I will take part in the European Team Championships, and most importantly, in the World Athletics Championships in Beijing, which will be in September 2027. There I would like to compete both in the race walking marathon and in the half marathon. Before that, there is also the World University Games, where I hope to also represent Bocconi on the international stage.
All great athletes have that moment of realization when the dream of reaching the highest possible levels of their discipline starts to become a very real possibility. When and how did you realise that you are on track to be at the next Olympic Games?
It is very weird, actually. In May 2025, I had an interview with another journalist here at Bocconi, and the title was “Dreaming about Los Angeles 2028.” When I read it, I almost felt ashamed of that ambition, which was far too unrealistic at that time. In my mind I was aiming at the 2032 Brisbane games, which seemed much more within my reach.
Earlier this year, in April, I finished second in a World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships race, and someone told me very clearly: this is the first step towards Los Angeles. Before that moment, no one had told me that my dream had become a realistic goal to work towards, something to realistically achieve with time and practice. Now I wake up every day thinking about those Olympic Games. I even have a countdown on my phone. In the next two years I have to prepare for the half marathon, which is the only race walking event in Los Angeles, but I feel good about it as well. I already know how to compete on this distance well, as I hold the under-23 European record.
We are wrapping up with the interview. Is there anything else you would like to add?
I’d like to deeply thank Bocconi and the university community for the great wave of affection that I received over the past few days. It was something I never took for granted and completely unexpected. I’m very grateful for all of this. Whenever I’m competing in a race, I don’t just feel like I’m representing my team and Italy, but also for all of us Bocconiani. And I really hope to represent Bocconi proudly wherever I compete.
My name is Pietro Ferrari and I was born and raised in the city of Milan. After three fantastic years in BIG I have decided to continue my Bocconi Journey in Politics and Policy Analysis. My interests span across multiple fields but the one I am most interested in are History, Politics and International Relations. But what still makes me hopeful about the world is traveling, the only thing I consider my real passion, especially when I manage to find the time to write down my thoughts and feelings on the road.