Bebe VIO

After battling a serious illness as a child, Bebe found the will to start over again through fencing. Together with her family, she also founded art4sport, an organisation that funds, develops, and manufactures prosthetics for children and young people with disabilities, promoting access to Paralympic sports.

She won the European Paralympic title in both the individual and team foil events at just 17 years of age. A few months later, she also took home the Under-18 world title. It was the first step in an extraordinary winning streak that would see her triumph in every individual competition she entered over the next 10 years.

At the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, she won her first Olympic gold medal in foil fencing, thus becoming one of the symbols of Italian Paralympic sport, helping to raise awareness of the values of inclusion and determination.

The Milan-Cortina Winter Games marked her third appearance as a torchbearer at an Olympic opening ceremony. Later in the year, she announced her retirement from fencing, wrapping up a career with innumerable successes, including 2 Paralympic gold medals, 5 world titles, and 5 European titles. She is now embarking on a new challenge in athletics, having qualified for the 100 metres at the Italian Paralympic Championships, which will take place on 4 and 5 July.