It was a very happy birthday for Francesca Lollobrigida.
Lollobrigida, competing today on her 35th birthday, brought home the gold for Team Italy in the women’s speed skating 3000m — and set an Olympic record in the process.
The Italian crowd went wild as the hometown hero raced to the finish. Lollobrigida fought for her lead after trailing Team Canada’s Valerie Maltais, who finished with a bronze medal, for most of the race. She overtook her competitor in the final moments of the neck-and-neck race as her young son Tommaso watched from the sidelines.
Lollobrigida is the first Italian woman to ever win a speedskating gold and the first Italian athlete to win gold at the 2026 Olympics. She had previously earned a silver and bronze medal in 2022 at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Lollobrigida finished with a time of 3:54.28, comfortably ahead of the silver and bronze medal winners. She finished more than 2 seconds faster than silver medal winner Ragne Wiklund of Norway, which is notable in a sport where competitors finish within hundredths of seconds of each other.
The Olympic record was previously held by Dutch speed skating legend Irene Schouten at 3:56.93, set previously at the 2022 Beijing Games. Lollobrigida had finished with silver in Beijing. Today, Lollobrigida shaved over two seconds off that time.
The speedskater took time away from the sports after the Beijing Games to have her son. Last week, Lollobrigida shared an Instagram post about her decision to stop competing to start her family, saying that she feels proud of her decisions.
“In the last Olympics I had reached the highest point of my career and the realization that I was in the best moment of my sporting life. Yet I chose to stop.”
Lollobrigida had considered retiring ahead of this year’s Winter Olympics, but came back for a final Olympic race in her home country. On Saturday, she tearfully stood on the podium during the Italian national anthem, while the home crowd roared in celebration of her historic win. Lollobrigida previously announced that this would be her final Olympic Games.
The result is a major surprise, with speedskating favorite Joy Beune, of the Dutch team, not making it to the podium. Dutch skaters swept the podium in 2018, and this year’s competitors were expected to continue that trend. The Milan Cortina Games mark the first time a Dutch speed skater hasn’t finished with a medal in 16 years.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni celebrated Lollobrigida’s historic win in a post on X, touting her as the pride of Italy.
“Congratulations to Francesca Lollobrigida for an extraordinary Olympic gold, the first for Italy, won with an Olympic record on her birthday,” she wrote. “Italian pride, talent and determination. Bravo!”
Lollobrigida comes from a family of Italian public figures, including her aunt, the Hollywood great Gina Lollobrigida and her father, fellow skater Maurizio Lollobrigida.
The speedskater was formerly an inline skater like her father, but switched to speed skating to have the chance of becoming an Olympian. She was inspired by U.S. speed skater Chad Hendrick, who switched from inline to ice, winning Olympic gold in the Torino 2006 5000m.