BERBENNO DI VALTELLINA, Italy, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The evening after Arianna Fontana comes home from the European Championships, the kitchen at her parents’ house fills in waves.
Cousins, neighbours, children, friends spill in.
Plates move, chairs scrape, someone opens another bottle of wine, joyful at her latest short skating title at the championship in the Netherlands earlier this month.
Fontana moves constantly — hugging, laughing, scooping her baby niece onto her arm, helping her mother serve pizzocheri and taroz — in the same house where she grew up, in the valley that has never let her be anyone but Arianna.
“First thing is to go and see my parents. I need a hug from them,” she says. “And then obviously food in Italy, it’s a big thing.”
Twenty years after her debut in Turin, Italy's most decorated winter Olympian is preparing to skate another Games on home ice — no longer Italy’s teenage prodigy, but a 35-year-old nearing what may be her final act in the sport.
She was 15 when she won bronze in the 3,000-meter relay a
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