Alessandro Bovolenta continues family tradition
"Pressure is a privilege" for the 18-year-old Italian whose Olympic silver medal-winning father Vigor suffered a fatal heart attack after a match a decade ago. The youngster spoke to Olympics.com about his flourishing career following in the footsteps of his parents.
Volleyball
The name Bovolenta for Italian volleyball fans provokes feelings of joy, reverence, and sadness.
Vigor Bovolenta was middle blocker in the greatest Azzurri men's team - known as ‘la Generazione di Fenomeni' - and won Olympic silver at Atlanta 1996.
In March 2012, four years after the end of his international career, Bovolenta died of cardiac arrest triggered by severe coronary artery disease having been taken ill during a Italian League fourth-tier match. He was just 37.
His widow Federica Lisi, who also played volleyball for Italy, discovered she was pregnant with their fifth child two weeks after her husband's death.
Alessandro Bovolenta, their first-born, was seven years old at the time.
While his early sporting ambitions were in football as a goalkeeper, young Alessandro soon switched to the sport his parents excelled in.
Now 18, he is mature beyond his years and already looking destined to follow his father to the top.
Born in Rome but raised in Ravenna - a small town close to Bologna - the teenager was named MVP as Italy won September's European U20 Championships on home soil.
That success came months after the 2.05m-opposite spiker made his Italian Superlega debut for Ravenna Porto Robur Costa - the club where his father enjoyed initial great success.
Alessandro Bovolenta: from goalkeeper to volleyball prodigy
Vigor Bovolenta played for Italy from 1995-2008, winning four World League titles, two European titles, one World Cup, and that Olympic silver medal.
He also won the 1991 Club World Championship with Ravenna Porto and three consecutive European Champions League crowns (1992-94).
Lisi ended her career to give birth to Alessandro, but he insists he was never forced to follow his parents into volleyball.
Alessandro told Olympics.com, "Zero pressure. Mum always told us, ‘Do what you want.' So it was always a freedom. If there were any 'obligations’ she would tell me 'Look, at least do something, do a sport,' but then I would do it anyway.
“When I was younger, I didn't follow volleyball that much. I wasn't interested in it. I was following my school friends who played football**.** I started in defence, then I tried as goalkeeper and I did well. I was 11 years old. I felt the cold a lot... during training," Bovolenta told us.
"As a goalkeeper, you get a shot every 10 minutes. You have to stand there in the cold in winter, and then you come home and you're frozen. It's fine with friends... but then I took another route.
“Suddenly I grew tall and said ‘Let's try volleyball.' And it went well. I'm still having fun, in training, in the game, I'm getting on well with my teammates, so that's good."
Alessandro Bovolenta: Volleyball in his DNA
The rest of the children have since followed the same path with Arianna (13), twins Aurora and Angelica (11), and Andrea (10) all now playing volleyball.
Arianna has recently moved to Rome to play with Volleyrò Casal de Pazzi B.
Alessandro even joked of his siblings, "When they grow up a bit, the match is on!"
As for his father's death, he said it "united our family much more."
"Mum had extra responsibilities which she did not transfer to me, because I was a child even if I was the eldest. We were all one unit and always together."
These days, the Bovolentas turn out in force to watch Alessandro play with Mum looking on approvingly.
"She has fun, she gives me advice... Mamma Mia! She's there, she's very involved... she enjoys it too. Yes, yes, you see her up there in the stands, in a corner... like an eagle, watching from on high!”
While he has only seen limited video footage of his parents in action, he says he can spot a likeness in the way they play.
"In our movements we are very similar... between Mum and Dad we are practically identical!”
Success with Italy's U20 team
Vigor's coach at Atlanta 1996, Julio Velasco, is now helping mould Alessandro's career as the Italian Volleyball Federation's youth technical director.
This is something of a purple patch for Italy with no fewer than 10 tournament victories in 2021/22 across all age groups including Paola Egonu leading the women to Nations League glory, and their men's team claiming their fourth FIVB World Championship title and first in 24 years.
The men's U18 and U22 teams had both won European titles, as had the women at U18, U20 and U22 level. It was therefore up to Alessandro Bovolenta and co to ensure a full set of junior European crowns on home soil.
He recalled, "Velasco told us not to feel pressure because we were at home. However, the pressure was obviously there, because we all knew that we were the last 'Azzurri' competing, because we played the final on 25 September. After us, there was only the Women's Worlds Championships left.
"But as as our national team coach Matteo Battocchio says: 'Pressure is for privileged people.'"
That pressure reached its maximum in a dramatic final against Poland.
Italy went 2-0 up, but the Poles roared back to take the match into a deciding set which the home team won 15-6.
It was a great triumph for the team although Bovolenta - who claimed the MVP award - was in no fit state to join the celebrations.
He said, "I felt very bad physically. I managed to handle the tension during the match, but I left the celebrations early. I went back to the hotel, got into bed and woke up in the morning... still in my shoes and tracksuit with my medal around my neck!
"It took me a week to recover. I even had to postpone my preseason at my club Ravenna."
Idols, goals, and the Olympic Games
Bovolenta says the volleyball player he looks up to is Dutch star Nimir Abdel-Aziz, while his idols from other sports are footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and basketball hero Michael Jordan.
He says, "Ronaldo is the first one I take as an example, because he has a mentality that goes beyond sport."
As far as immediate goals are concerned, Bovolenta says that he intends to establish himself in the Superlega although that may take a little time with Ravenna Porto currently playing in Italy's second tier after being relegated last season.
He has no plans as yet to move abroad, reflecting, "I'm fine in Italy. The best league is here so if there's a chance to stay it will certainly be my first choice. My goal, for sure, is to go to the SuperLega and to stay there. As my grandfather always says, 'It's one thing is to get there and another to stay there.' I really like that phrase.
"When I made my Superlega debut, it was a bit of a random thing. So staying there and proving myself is a bit more complicated. That's the number one goal, and then there's the senior national team and the Olympic Games."
Paris 2024 may come a little too soon for the teenager who expects Poland and hosts France to be among the favourites for gold.
The family, of course, already has an Olympic medal although he did not see it until six years ago.
"We were watching the Rio 2016 Games and me and my mum went looking for dad's medal. Once we found it... it looked so beautiful to me! Then, a few days later my paternal grandparents came home. We showed them, and they then also gave us all of Dad's medals. In the end they kept some of them, and we kept two: the CEV Cup and the Olympic silver.
"Now we keep the Olympic medal together with the gold I won last summer. It's nice. The Olympic medal weighs quite a bit! But seeing it up close is twice as impressive because it's beautifully made.
"You can certainly feel the emotions behind it. Italy lost by two points in the final and that hurts. But that medal is important... only a few people are lucky enough to have an Olympic medal at home."
Perhaps he can add to the family's medal haul in the years to come.