Porec, Croatia, July 2, 2016 – For Mirta Ranghieri the next few months will prove to be an exciting time as like many parents out there she is all set to head to Rio de Janeiro to watch her child in action at the 2016 Olympic Games.
I her case Mirta and daughter Elisa will be in town to cheer on Italian player Alex Ranghieri who will be chasing beach volleyball glory on Copacabana Beach alongside Adrian Carambula.
The pair have been together from the 2015 Moscow Grand Slam and since then they have built an impressive reputation on court mixing Ranghieri’s prowess at the net and Carambula’s agility at the back of the court.
The Italians first signalled their potential by winning bronze at the 2015 Porec Major Series event and they have added gold at the Antalya and Qatar Opens and silver at the 2015 CEV European Championships.
It meant they will be one of three Italian teams competing at Rio 2016 along with Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai in the men’s tournament and Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi Toth in the women’s, something that was confirmed when Ranghieri and Carambula were competing at the 2016 Moscow Grand Slam.
“I was lying down on my couch and we were hoping. We knew there was a possibility but weren’t sure,” Mirta said. “When he called me I realised right away that he was going to tell me something important because he was excited in his voice.
Early potential
“I couldn’t say anything for 10 seconds and was completely breathless and started to cry. I still can’t believe it. I’m looking at my plane ticket and thinking this is a dream come true.”
Signora Ranghieri hails from Kingston in Ontario, Canada, but a chance meeting with Alex’s father during a holiday in 1973 has meant that she has called Italy home ever since. The family live in Pordenone, not far from Venice and it was there that Alex began to show his potential on the volleyball court.
He began aged six with local club Futura and for Mirta most weekends were spent driving the highways and byways of Italy’s north-east with a car load of screaming kids.
By the age of 15 he was involved with the Italian junior team and then aged 17 he moved down the road to Treviso and from their two years later to Loreto in Tuscany. He eventually switched to beach volleyball and made his World Tour debut at the 2010 Rome Grand Slam alongside Andrea Tomatis.
“I always put him in volleyball because we saw that he was really, really good in that sport,” Mirta said. “After three or four years he said, ‘you’ve played a lot of sports, baseball, softball, hockey, how come you’re always putting me into volleyball? I want to try new sports.’ So I said ‘you’re perfect for volleyball.
“He couldn’t be any other way because he had to do sport. You could tell he would grow up to be tall; his father is tall, my grandfather was very tall, so there was no way at all that he couldn’t do sport.”
The Porec Major was the final chance for Mirta to watch her son in action before departing for Rio 2016. The pair will hope to do better at Copacabana than they did at Porec where they fell at the first knockout round.
Italian Olympian
Mirta’s presence in the stands at Copacabana means that they won’t have to worry about the post-match phone call and it also means that she will be there when the announcer calls out her son’s name as an Olympian for the first ever time.
“I will tell him just to be himself and do the best he can do and to have fun and enjoy it because it is a once in a life-time experience and to live it to his fullest,” she said.
“I’m going to have goose bumps for about 20 minutes and will then just cry. I get emotional in these tournaments and they are important tournaments, but just thinking he is going to be in Rio and they will announce his name, I don’t know what I will do. I will live this experience to the fullest.”