For the University of Miami’s Chiara Pellacani, athletic success came early and often. Before entering college, the Italian diver represented her home country at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, achieving a seventh-place finish in the 3-meter synchronized springboard.
But Pellacani’s path to the 2024 Olympics was anything but smooth-sailing.
Before the 2023 European Diving Championships, a competition that could secure her place in Paris, the 5-1 diver took a break from the sport in order to address her declining mental health.
“I definitely needed a break,” Pellacani said. “If I don’t take a break from diving a little bit, it starts to get really hard mentally. You just compete non-stop and it’s very draining mentally. I needed that break to come back stronger than before.”
“That’s what I’ll do after the Olympics: take a little time off before I get back to practice. Diving is a very mental sport, so [mental health] is the most important thing.”
Pellacani’s diving coach, Tommasso Marconi, told the Herald that the break allowed Pellacani to refine her mind-set even further.
“She grew a lot as a person,” Marconi said. “She’s really in the [mind-set] of a professional now.”
The UM diver won the women’s 3-meter springboard during the 2022 European Aquatics Championships. But with a spot in the Olympics on the line and recent mental health setbacks, Pellacani wasn’t certain how she would perform.
But those doubts would soon dissolve as the competition came underway. After a second-place finish in the preliminary stage of the competition, Pellacani pulled away in the final to win a gold medal and secure her spot in Paris.
“I think this medal means the world to me because in the past few months I’ve struggled a lot with my mental health,” Pellacani said after winning the gold medal. “I had some rest from diving because it was really hard, so it’s just amazing.”
The University of Miami diver hopes that sharing her struggles with mental health publicly will assist other athletes.
“I’m always very open to talking about it because I think it can always help other athletes. We’re all in the same situation,” Pellacani told the Herald.
According to Marconi, Pellacani’s confidence has grown immensely since he started coaching her two years ago.
“When she won the first European championships [in 2022], she didn’t know how to think like a champion,” Marconi said. “But I would repeatedly tell her that she had the chance to win a gold medal [at the Olympics]. She would laugh at the beginning. Now she finally understands.”
Both Pellacani and Marconi also credit U.S collegiate competition and coaching for helping her improve her diving performance.
“In the U.S the divers are competing a lot, more than the Europeans,” Marconi said. “They compete almost every weekend. I think that’s the secret formula for the American’s success. They really know about competing.”
After finishing her first two years of college at LSU, where she won SEC freshman of the year in 2022, Pellacani then transferred to the University of Miami where she took a redshirt year to train for the Olympics.
“I was in Louisiana to see her practice one weekend. I told her the USA is perfect for her, but LSU was not the best place to compete,” Marconi said. “She was the best diver of the group and the second-best wasn’t good enough to go to the Olympics.”
Marconi encouraged Pellacani to transfer to UM, where she would be surrounded by some of the best coaches and divers in the world.
“I told her that there’s the opportunity to go to Miami, where you’ll have two great coaches in Randy Ableman and Dario di Fazio,” Marconi said. “Also, a lot of the best divers in the world go there like Emma Gullstrand and Mohamed Farouk.”
During her year off from competing collegiately, Pellacani said that she was focused on perfecting her entry technique.“I feel like I wasn’t that confident in my entry before,” Pellacani said. “Randy and Dario helped me a lot with that this year. I think we improved it a lot.”
With her first event in the three-meter synchronized springboard coming in about a week, Pellacani is excited to have her friends and family support her in Paris.
“[The Tokyo Olympics] were a little weird because of COVID,” Pellacani said. “It was a different experience. But I’m very excited [for Paris] because my family is gonna be there and I’ll have more support.”
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