“One Without the Other, We are Nobody”

MONTREAL

Italian pair skaters Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii can fill a room without even skating.

They have big emotions, big successes, big woes to solve.  “We’re Italian! We’re emotional!” Macii cries. What do you expect?

Their free skate at the world figure skating championships is to “Cinema Paradiso” for heaven’s sake, music from a movie that revitalized Italy’s film industry, won an Academy Award and a host of others. The film’s ending is considered one of the best in movie history. It’s poignant, surprising, heart-twisting. The music is most beautiful.

Conti and Macii are helping to revolutionize Italian pair skating, too, becoming the first Italian pair team to win a world medal last year (bronze) but they haven’t found their ending yet.

When they got together, it was to participate at the Olympics in Milan in 2026. Just to participate. They didn’t expect what happened during the 2022-23 season, when they earned medals at Grand Prix events, and finished third at the Grand Prix Final. At the beginning of the season, they were ecstatic to get to go to two Grand Prix events, and jokingly said it would help them get to the Grand Prix Final, where only the top six teams compete. And then they did.

“We went from the bum to the stars,” Macii said.

The year that followed that big bronze medal? Not so star-like sometimes. Best referred to as a roller coaster.

They had been a romantically involved couple, even before they started to skate pairs. Just before that big world championship, they split up – as a couple, not as a pair team.

“All summer was up and down to find a new feeling and balance, something new and different,” Macii said.

So with “a mix of stuff,” they competed the current season. They still have a palpable connection.

Throughout the season, they performed not badly, finishing second at both of their Grand Prix and second at the Grand Prix Final, their best skate of the season.   Then came the shocker. Everything went wrong for them at the European championships. They finished sixth.

“It was unexpected for us,” Conti said. “But for us this year to stay on the first place is harder.”

Conti said they didn’t skate both programs equally badly, but mistakes happened.

“Europeans was the biggest hammer on our heads,” Macii said. (Did I say they live large?)

“We had to go up,” Conti said.

“We know what we can do. We need to work together, find a way of working together, fix some problems, especially mentally,” Macii said.

Everything is going swimmingly right now. Conti said they are ”super friends.” They joke and banter and tease. They just want to be happy and “skate together good,” they say,

Although there were three able Italian teams to fill two world team spots, Conti and Macii won the top spot, based on points that take into consideration total scores of international competitions, nationals, and Europeans. The new team of Lucrezia Beccari and veteran Matteo Guarise took the other spot, having won Europeans.

Fortunately for Italy, Conti and Macii never considered splitting up as a pair team after they called their relationship quits.  “It was never a question,” Macii said. There was that plan to get to the Olympic Games. They had already talked about it a few times, that if something were to happen to their relationship, “work is work.”

“It has always been about work, even when we’ve been in a relationship,” Macii said.

Still, the time following the breakup was difficult, Conti acknowledged.

On the ice, they look the same. A charismatic team, they still feel on ice what they felt one, two years ago. “Outside is different,” he said. “We find a balance.”

Conti said their relationship as friends is better than before. Now at the end of the day, no matter what happens, they look at each other and say: “See you tomorrow.”

“We both worked all our lives on this, so this is our chance together,” Macii said. “The one without the other, we are nobody, if we want to reach our goals.”

“We can do it,” Conti says. Sometimes they still finish each other’s sentences, thoughts.

“That’s the thing that will stay in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives, even when we are separate,” Macii said.