As a child, I lived on top of a hill.

And to get home, every day, I had to climb it.

I had to face it.

Every time I challenged myself, angrier and more determined than ever, to see if I could get to the door a second faster than the previous one.

Or maybe taking one step less.

I had no idea why.

I didn't know where that spark of competition came from, that little fire of competitive fury.

Again and again, it forced me, almost anchored me to my responsibilities.

The need of dreaming big.

The need of representing.

I grew up with three older brothers, in a family where everyone played sports.

None for a living.

All for fun.

Competition was an integral part of my education.

A necessary form of my thinking.

The only way I knew to grow up, one inch at a time.

And yet there was something strange, something sweetly and naively strange in my way of looking at the World.

Something pure and arrogant at the same time.

An immediate, transparent, impossible-to-dissimulate naturalness that my unconscious, however, applied to something that should remain secret.

A hidden desire.

Too loud to tell.

I remember when I was sitting on the couch, with my nose in the television watching the Olympics. And I remember how I thought, or rather how I felt deep in my heart, that my purpose in life was to “represent”.

Honor my country.

Defend its colors.

Bring my people onto the field.

I thought it and felt it.

At 7, 8 years old, before I even knew which sport I wanted to try, in order to succeed.

Or, even better, before I even knew which sport I would choose to succeed.

There was no doubt, only curiosity, only eager anticipation.

I will get there.

Period.

We'll figure out how, later.

Actually, I can't even remember which competition I watched on TV.

When I think back I only see the colors, the joy.

I feel the desire for greatness.

The decision, after all, could have waited, because, to be completely honest, I was good at any sport.

Swimming, soccer, tennis: everything came to me with extraordinary naturalness.

With ease.

I thought that perhaps tennis would be my ticket to History, since at the time I much preferred to try my hand at an individual discipline.

I trusted myself.

The others, less.

Another lesson that volleyball would then teach me, many years later.

I started with volleyball late, very late.

Almost by chance, certainly reluctantly.

The first time I set foot on the court I was almost 15, and I used to kick the ball.

I couldn’t even understand the coach’s instructions, because I really didn’t have the vocabulary for that game.

Nevertheless, in the space of six months, everything blossomed.

Everything opened up, like a flower.

As if it was the only possible solution to the encounter between me and volleyball.

As if the truth had always existed and I just had to discover it, and not build it from scratch.

I’ve always been a quick learner, but the speed with which each piece fell into place was astonishing, even for me.

In the space of a couple of years, just a couple of years, from the first time I played, I was already on everyone’s lips, ready to make the big leap.

Rio de Janeiro.

The enormous Rio.

Waiting for me, not yet eighteen and completely new to this environment.

That experience was a blessing, for better or for worse.

I was both far away from home, and close to my culture.

Immersed in my Brazil.

With my family still in my daily horizon.

In the same time zone.

A crash course in independence, in a huge yet protected space: my university years.

I had so many expectations on me, and learning to manage them was not easy at all.

I discovered at my own expense that winning is not enough to be appreciated.

I discovered that it is not enough to commit yourself, to offer your best, with the natural ups and downs of sport.

Because someone will always find more pleasure in criticizing you, in bringing up your personal, in insulting you.

I did not understand the reasons why haters do what they do, when I was a girl.

But even that moment, was, in some way, formative.

Above all, thanks to my mother, who helped me put everything into perspective, to give a different value to other people's words.

She, who was by my side when as a child I tried to climb the hill at home faster than the day before, and who is still by my side now, when she calls me after the games and before anything else asks me "how are you?".

Just "how are you?".

The immediacy of a gesture that makes her, once again, a mother to me.

Always and in any case a mother, even as I grow up, as responsibilities, commitments, and importance multiply.

She has always been the most important person and always will be.

Because she has understood the shape of my being from the beginning.

The weight and fragility of my relationship with the dreams of greatness.

She has been the devil's advocate, throughout my career.

Capable of great ideas, and contrary opinions.

But, at the same time, always the first to take a step back.

To tell me: do what you feel.

As if he recognized the strength of my personality and wanted to test it.

Nothing more and nothing less, because deep down she knows, he shas always known, that when I really feel something there is no way to make me change my mind.

Who knows, really, where my competitive spirit coming from.

Who knows what still burns inside me today.

Today that I am in the strongest team in the world.

Today that I have achieved everything I dreamed of achieving.

Today that I would not need it, perhaps.

Something that my land, my hill and my mother keep the secret of, smiling at each other, waiting to share it with me, someday.

A rhyme that unites us in the same story, in the same fairy tale.

Written in the sky, on the skin or in the earth.

It doesn't change much.

The scent is the same.

And all around, it's stardust.