At her first Olympics, in Rio, Paola Egonu and her Italy volleyball teammates failed to get out of their group. In Tokyo, they lost heavily in the quarterfinals.
Now Egonu is not only a gold medal winner but the inspiration behind her country’s first-ever Olympic title in the sport.
The superstar, whose parents emigrated from Nigeria to the city of Cittadella before she was born, has faced racism and discrimination throughout her life. There have even been times when she considered quitting the national team completely because of the hate she has faced.
Yet after the 3-0 win over the USA in the Paris final on Sunday, the front page of the Corriere della Sera website declared: “The superiority is clear. It’s Paola.”
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Egonu has always been a standout. In a 2018 interview with the same publication, when she was still a teenager, she stated matter of factly that she had a girlfriend.
Considering the undercurrents of machismo and anti-LGBTQ attitudes that still linger in corners of Italian sport and society, this was a courageous step.
It quickly brought additional media interest in her personal life. Within days, Gazzetta dello Sport published an image on its front page of Egonu kissing her then girlfriend, Katarzyna Skorupa, who was also her club teammate.
A feature interview with the official Olympics website in August 2020 referred to Egonu as being openly gay. However, that wasn’t quite correct.
The following year, before the delayed Games, she spoke to Corriere della Sera again. It had been reported that she was engaged to Skorupa but by this time, they had split up.
“I admitted to loving a woman — and I’d say it again, I’ve never regretted it — and everyone said: ‘There, Egonu is a lesbian’.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. I fell in love with a colleague, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t fall in love with a boy, or with another woman.”
Meanwhile, the Tokyo experience for Egonu and her teammates turned out to be an unhappy one. The coach Davide Mazzanti accused his players of being too addicted to social media and not focusing on the task in hand.
The players responded a few weeks later by becoming European champions for the first time, perhaps proving a point.
By summer 2022, having won numerous domestic, European and individual honors with her club side Conegliano, Egonu transferred to Vafikbank Istanbul and was also photographed with a new partner — Polish volleyball player Michal Filip.
Having a boyfriend led to more questions about her sexuality in interviews. “Don’t ask me if it’s a man or a woman, it doesn’t matter. I like people, and I don’t care about gender,” she told Milan magazine Oggi.
Italy went into the 2022 World Championships as Nations League title holders, and ended up with bronze medals after beating the USA in the third/fourth place match.
Egonu went on to win another Champions League title with her Turkish club but returned to Italy after just one season, joining Vero Volley Milano.
Soon, there would be a change for the national team as well — coach Mazzanti leaving by mutual consent, after Italy failed to advance from the Olympic qualification tournament. He had omitted Egonu from his squad after a disagreement, and the team suffered.
In the end, it was Italy’s world ranking that got them to Paris 2024 — they rose to number one in the months following Mazzanti’s exit.
Meanwhile, at an AC Milan v Juventus soccer match in October, Egonu was snapped for the first time with Leonardo Puliti, the brand manager of Vero Volley, the consortium that owns six clubs in the region. The following month, they were “Instagram official.”
Under new coach Julio Velasco, Italy prepared for the Olympics by securing a second FIVB Nations League title in three years.
In Paris, they were dominant, only dropping a set in their opening pool match against the Dominican Republic before sweeping past the Netherlands and Turkey; Serbia in the quarterfinals; Turkey again in the semi; and then the USA.
Puliti was in Paris to watch Sunday’s final, after which Egonu was named tournament MVP. The stats show she was the best server as well as being the second top points scorer behind Turkey’s Melissa Vargas.
The U.S. again included out bisexual player Haleigh Washington in their team. Part of the Olympic title-winning squad in Tokyo, she accepted defeat in the final graciously, writing on her Instagram story: “Congrats to these Italian lovelies!”
Over on Egonu’s, goodwill messages from friends were shared and also from Team Italia colleagues, including silver medal-winning fencer Tommaso Marini.
With the gold medal round her neck, the MVP told reporters: “This is the best day. It’s the competition that every athlete dreams of, and having my family, my boyfriend and my friends here supporting me is wonderful.”
