Sport knows no disability. To practice it requires only one rule: the willingness to accept yourself and others. On November 22nd, the WSP Photography cultural center opened En Garde, a photography exhibition curated by Fabio Renzi and centered on the life of Andrea Pellegrini, Paralympic fencing champion. Through honest, unfiltered black-and-white photographs, Renzi captures the struggles and sacrifices hidden behind a medal. Tracing the pivotal moments of Pellegrini's life—starting with the devastating railway accident that, at twenty, cost him one of his legs—the camera is less interested in Andrea's athletic victories than in the small conquests of daily life: those of a father and a man who reinvented himself, finding good in what fate had given him. The story of Paralympic athlete Pellegrini, like the exhibition itself, begins on November 24, 1991, at Ladispoli railway station, its image opening the show.
A victim of the accident and rushed to Aurelia Hospital, Andrea endured multiple surgeries. But despite eight hundred stitches, he lost a leg. The young man watched any hope of returning to sports requiring the use of both legs—like his beloved surfing—disappear. "After the accident," he recalls, "they had to tie me to the bed. I just screamed. I looked at my amputated leg and thought it was terribly unfair. I couldn't accept myself." The hospital stay was brutal, but there Andrea met other young people who changed his life, helping him recover hope. One of them, paralyzed from the waist down, made him see what he had not actually lost: the mobility of his remaining limb (because having two legs does not mean you can use them). In that moment, Pellegrini's perspective shifted entirely. For rehabilitation, on their advice, he turned to Rome's Santa Lucia Institute, an excellent recovery center with fully equipped areas for physical activity and opportunities to pursue various disciplines, including basketball and fencing. He developed a deep passion for fencing that would earn him a place on the Paralympic national team. Number one in sabre, Pellegrini also excelled in basketball, as the exhibition photographs show. In fencing, he won nine medals—including gold in Athens in 2004—becoming an inspiration to many. For him, fencing became resilience itself, the discipline that allowed him to improve day after day, accepting himself and learning to live not only with victories but especially with defeats. "You win and you lose," he said at the opening. "In life, it's not always beautiful, and when fate gives us a victory, we must recognize it and hold it in our hearts."
On November 22nd, alongside Andrea Pellegrini and Fabio Renzi was Diana Pintus, coordinator of Storie Paralimpiche, a traveling blog following disabled athletes across the world. They presented the athlete's biography, also titled En Garde, funded by ITOP SpA Officine Ortopediche, in which images and text offer an intimate and faithful portrait of Andrea's character. What strikes you about the exhibition (open through December 12th) is how few photographs show moments of athletic glory—like the shot of him landing the decisive blow against his opponent at the 2017 World Championships. The photographer prefers to show the simplicity of Pellegrini's everyday life: at home with his children, in training before a competition, shaving, doing ordinary things. The project aims to reveal the vulnerabilities of a man who, as graceful and flexible as the sabre he wields, bends without breaking. Drawing strength from his difficult past, he moves toward the future with life "on guard." A moving exhibition that inspires us to follow his example. In 2018, he retired from the national team to work with young people at Rome's Santa Lucia center, hoping that "through sport" they will learn to "smile again" and "share their smiles." "That's a gift I received after my accident," he says.
