In a Sanremo Festival that is so – too – measured, it doesn’t take much to make a slip and end up in the crosshairs of the web. Although Carlo Conti tried in every way to avoid any type of controversy, he himself generated one with a decidedly unsuccessful joke.
The fuse exploded when the host welcomed the skater Francesca Lollobrigida, double gold medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics, welcoming her with a “for us you are a golden motherAnd if at the Ariston the audience burst into applause, controversy broke out outside the Ariston.
The point isn’t good faith, it’s context. For days there had been discussions about how much the public narrative had insisted on the champion’s motherhood more than on her exploits on the ice. And right there, in front of millions of spectators, comes the sentence that brings everything back to the center of the cyclone. A communication short circuit that is difficult to ignore.
First mother, then champion?
The question is subtle but complex: why is a multiple Olympic champion still introduced starting from her family role? Lollobrigida took to that stage to celebrate two gold medals won thanks to her talent. Yet the key word becomes motherhood. Not a simple lexical detail, but something now inherent in our culture.
In women’s sport, history repeats itself: when a man wins it is a phenomenon. When a woman wins and is a mother she becomes a “mom who made it” as if motherhood cannot be reconciled with being a champion. As if becoming a mother precluded the continuation of a sporting (and non-sporting) career. Conti, a seasoned professional, hardly ignores the weight of words. Yet this time the choice seemed surprisingly misaligned with the already scorching climate. Try to imagine if he had addressed the athlete Gianmarco Tamberi calling him “a golden dad” to celebrate his sporting achievements: wouldn’t it have sounded slightly strange or out of place?
Lollobrigida extinguishes any controversy (and proves superior to the haters)
The real winner, in every sense, was the person directly involved who didn’t show any annoyance, on the contrary. Despite the haters who attacked her for bringing her son to the track, she proudly remembered her two golds and spoke of Tommaso’s presence in the stands as an extra boost. No controversy, just the serenity of someone who knows they have written a sports page. Because that’s what he did, making us rejoice twice in just a few days with his skill. Nothing else.
The indignation remained off stage, amplified by social media, where the sentence was read as yet another sign of an unbalanced narrative. And so, what Conti intended as a compliment turned into a media incident. A question remains: is it possible that, in an event constructed to the millimeter, no one intercepted the risk? In Sanremo words are never just words. They are titles, hashtags, fuses. And sometimes an adjective is enough to transform a celebration into a national controversy.
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