Italian motocross loses pieces: Giorgia Blasigh retires
10/11/2023
Lisa Cavalli
Many of us have heard the name of Giorgia Blasigh, a young Italian motocross rider born in 2005.
Since childhood, she showed great determination in everything she did, until she discovered her great passion for motocross in 2014. Since then, she has trained with great dedication and commitment to achieve the goals she set herself day after day. She is currently the strongest rider in Italy after queen Kiara Fontanesi. She won the international Supermarecross championship in 2018 against all boys and won 3 Italian Under17 titles, finishing in the top 10 in the world last year. This year she achieved an excellent 4th place in the Italian Championship and finished 13th in the World Championship, missing the last two races of both championships due to injury. From a world perspective, she is the second strongest Italian.
Despite this, at the end of this year’s championships, Giorgia reluctantly decided to interrupt her career. I wanted to have a chat with her to understand why she made this decision.
“There are many reasons that made me think. I was among the strongest in Italy, after Kiara Fontanesi there was me. I had injured myself at a race in the Italian this year. We were in Bosisio. I slipped and re-rotated my scaphoid, exactly the same spot as last year. I raced anyway, managed to do a good result even though I wasn’t in good shape. Then I stopped for the summer but I wasn’t really in shape yet and that’s when I started to think about my future.
I tried to show, even in that race, that I could do it, that I had the strength and determination despite the injury. I gave everything, I did my best. But when you see that on the other side there is never any feedback, that you put in so much effort and give all your time but nothing changes, that leads me to think that there is not the prosperous future that I always believed there could be since I was a child.
I would have had to change teams at the end of the season anyway because KTM had different plans for next season and in those plans girls were not included. The solutions for me were not so many and not interesting enough to do a good world championship. You know, after years of investing in this sport and you see that you don’t have a return, that you want it to be a good job but it’s hard to go on, you ask yourself two questions. More than that I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Given your role as a top pilot in Italy. Have you felt support from the institutions?
“At the moment I have not received a single phone call and I am really sorry because I thought there was more support from the Federation.
I can’t say anything about the federal technicians and the person in charge of the motocross sector, but I think there are limitations coming from the top. For sure I think it’s not at all nice for the Federation to lose young up-and-coming riders who have shown sacrifice and commitment with important results, and I’m not just talking about me. You need sponsors and teams ready to support you. But if you don’t find all that, you only go ahead because there are parents who help you and sacrifice themselves to give you the future you want. Then at some point you have to become independent, but when you see that the more years go by, the harder it is, you get discouraged. Frankly, I am disappointed with everything. I feel like closing a chapter and never speaking to anyone in this world again. I haven’t received a single call, not even to explain why. After 10 years in the industry I know people in this environment. Not even a caller.”
What will you do now?
“Now I will finish school. I have the last year of high school. I have already started working at my dad’s who has an estate agency. I am someone who is always trying to get busy and I needed to feel committed. It was time to commit to something at work.
Are you sure you will not retrace your steps?
“Yes, this time I am sure that the choice is final. I had stopped in 2019 for a year because I was really exhausted. I was not in good shape at the beginning of the season and both myself and my family had pulled so much physically. There was a bit of discouragement there too, but during the quarantine I had received offers. Then I started again with a completely different mentality. It was my own thing, without my parents’ involvement. I left and had my own experiences. For the last three years I was always around, my parents only came to the competitions and I was happy that my sport didn’t involve them as much as it did when I was younger.
I did it with all my heart, commitment and determination. When at the beginning of the year I found myself training in Rome with the greats like Cairoli and Prado it was like being in a dream and I hoped that was my path. But I realised that it was not so’.
Photos courtesy of Giorgia Blasigh
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