An average runner early in her college career, Megan Vaccaro took her race to the next level in the wake of a family trauma.

The most decorated runner in the history of Dominican University says it was a personal tragedy — the death of her beloved father — that sparked her fierce dedication to the sport and her multiple achievements.

“Going through college, I learned that nothing is impossible, and if you want something bad enough, you can find a way to make it happen,” 31-year-old Megan Vaccaro says.

A native of Oswego and a 2010 graduate of Dominican University, Vaccaro was inducted June 8 into her alma mater’s athletics hall of fame. She also is the university’s head coach for men’s and women’s cross country.

Vaccaro became the first individual cross-country conference champion in school history when she posted a 6K time of 22:39.26 at the 2008 Northern Athletics Conference Championship. Two weeks later, she set a 6K personal record with a time of 22:38.1 at the NCAA Division III Midwest regional race. She narrowly missed qualifying for the NCAA Division III national championship but earned All-Midwest region honors.

Vaccaro started running in middle school following the example of her older brother and joined the cross-country team as a freshman in high school, although she nearly gave up on the first day, she says. “I remember my mom picked me up and I was crying to her because I was the only freshman female,” she says. “She encouraged me to stick with it, and I did.”

Her running career at Dominican was nondescript her first year with some improvement her second year, she says, then everything changed after the sudden death of her father in 2007.

“I threw everything I had into running,” she says. “Running was the one thing that I knew that I had. It made me feel better. I could go out running and it would clear my mind and help me think.”

“Going into junior year I focused my energy on cross country,” she says. “I breathed cross country. I ate cross-country. Everything about my life was about cross-country, because I needed a focus on something. I turned something bad into something good.”

Vaccaro says she was always competitive and her own worst critic, which pushed her to want to be prepared physically and mentally, including by doing extensive research on her fellow runners. She graduated in 2010 with a major in nutrition and dietetics and a minor in Italian.

“I was very excited when I heard about it (being inducted into the hall of fame) just because currently there is no other cross-country runner in the hall of fame,” she says. “I burst into tears … happy tears. It was a surreal feeling.”

Vaccaro also works as a head trainer at Orange Theory Fitness in Naperville and continues to be an avid runner. She ran the Chicago Marathon in 2017 and has run 10Ks and half-marathons; she’s now training for a half-marathon in October. “After doing a full marathon I’ve really come to enjoy the half-marathon. It still gives you that challenge, but you’re still able to walk the next day,” she says, laughing.

Vaccaro says she’s been working on slowly growing the cross-country program at Dominican, describing her coaching style as balanced. “I want my runners to train hard. I want them to show up and be prepared and work hard, and I guess the rest will come. If they keep showing up, the results will come. But I also like to have fun. I’m a goof.”

“Any good or decent runner can become a great runner,” she says. “Not everybody will go to the Olympics, but anybody can improve if they want to improve. I think anybody can become a great runner if they put in the work.”

The above appears in the August 2019 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

Sidelined for 16 years by injuries, Deanna Stellato returned to competitive skating with a bang, earning a U.S. bronze medal last year and setting her sights on the 2022 Olympics.

A highly successful return to professional ice skating after a 16-year hiatus is not something Deanna Stellato ever envisioned.

“It’s definitely not something I thought I would do,” says Stellato, 35, who with her skating partner Nathan Bartholomay earned a U.S. bronze medal last year.

Stellato, a native of Illinois, competed as a junior until the 2000-2001 season. She had suffered multiple injuries and was having a hard time recovering from her last one, so she decided that if she couldn’t make the 2002 Olympics, she might as well retire and “be a normal person,” she explains.

She was perfectly content working at a plastic surgery office in Chicago, or so she thought, until a work retreat exercise that required answering a random question. “The card I got was, ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’’ she says. “I had a knee-jerk reaction and said, ‘I would win an Olympic gold medal.’”

She was stunned at her own answer, having no idea such feelings were buried deep. She talked to her mother and husband, and two weeks later she strapped on her 17-year-old blades and went to the skating rink. “I was able to nail my doubles on the first try. A lot of stuff just came back, muscle memory is an amazing thing. Also, I was in shape.”

She started training three days a week before work and within three months, she was hitting her triple jumps, she recalls. She then sought the opinion of her old coach, Cindy Watson-Caprel, who had moved to Florida and who gave her encouragement.

On her second trip to Florida, Stellato ran into a U.S. Figure Skating official who told her that Bartholomay was looking for a partner. “It was very serendipitous,” she says.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The two became a team in late June 2016, and Stellato quit her job and moved to Florida. She sees her husband as much as possible, and he travels a lot for work anyway, she says. “We both know this is just a moment in time,” she says.

Transitioning from singles to pair was a big adjustment, she says. At first, Bartholomay was the leader of the team and almost a coach for her, which she appreciated and needed, she says. “It slowly evolved. This season I finally feel like I have an input.”

She and Bartholomay work hard and are strong both mentally and physically, she says. They practice every day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. including an hour of warm up off the ice. They also run their program in front of a mirror, because they can’t see each other while skating, she explains.

Outfits are “super important,” she says, because they help set the mood and tell a story. “I don’t want to look childish. I want to look ladylike and pretty, not immature. It’s kind of a fine line that younger competitors can get away with.” Bartholomay also has a say on her outfits, which should never impede his movements, she adds.

As for the music, generally it’s a group decision taken with the coach, she says. “That’s the biggest bear, to figure out what you are skating to.”

Stellato and Bartholomay are training to make the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. “After that, we’re going to kind of reassess and take it from there,” she says.

Stellato says she has a strong attachment to her 100 percent Italian heritage. Her father’s parents were from Calabria and her mother’s from Abruzzo. “We grew up strongly Italian. We had Italian shirts, the Italian flag … everyone always had something Italian. And I do speak some Italian.”

She also credits her “strong genes” — her father was an all-American wrestler — with her comeback. “People say, ‘How are you able to do this?’ I say, ‘I’m sure it has to do with being Italian.’”

The above appears in the March 2019 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

After almost making the Olympic team, Christina Desiderio transitioned from elite- to college-level gymnastics and she couldn’t be happier.

Eighteen-year-old gymnast Christina Desiderio says competing at the 2016 Olympic trials after earning a spot twice on the U.S. national team was by far the highlight of her career.

“19,000 people, not a seat empty! Two days that I will never forget,” she says.

“I worked for 10 years of my life to try to make it to the 2016 Olympics,” she says. “That didn’t happen, but I got as close to my dream as I possibly could and I was so proud of myself! I worked so hard and even though I didn’t make it to my end goal, I still believe that all my hard work paid off.”

Desiderio is now a student at Louisiana State University, whose team placed fourth at the 2018 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships.

Her goal is for the team to win a national championship. “We’re all working very hard toward that,” she says.

But for a few months after the Olympic trials, Desiderio says, she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

“I felt pretty lost. I felt like I accomplished so much and I didn’t really know where to go from there. I was debating whether I should train for another four years and try for the Olympics again, or drop down to level 10 to enjoy my last two years before college.”

About nine months after Olympic trials, she hurt her back, and at that moment she knew it was a sign that she couldn’t be doing high-level gymnastics anymore. “That’s when I decided to come to college a year early,” she explains. “It was a very difficult decision, but it was definitely the best decision I could’ve made!”

Desiderio left elite-level gymnastics to join the LSU team. “I am beyond happy that I made the transition to college. It was definitely a big transformation from elite to college, but I love it! Being on a big team is something I’ve been waiting for my whole career.”

Desiderio started at age 6 in gymnastics, a sport her mother always wanted to take part in when she was younger. She fell in love with the sport immediately, and the love has only grown since, she says.

“Yes, I have my bad days, but I couldn’t imagine my life without it. The part I love most is being able to work hard for something and have it pay off in the end. It is a very rewarding sport if you give 100 percent effort all the time.”

Being a high-level gymnast takes mental and physical toughness, passion, drive, motivation, constant hard work, and “the right attitude and being able to fail and bounce back from it,” she says.

Her strengths as a gymnast are being able to compete under pressure and being mentally strong. “A lot of gymnasts struggle with those things, but over the years I’ve been able to learn and overcome the fears and nerves,” she says.

During competition, she tries to keep herself calm and focused by visualizing and praying, she says. “You’ll probably see my head down and eyes closed a few times throughout the competitions,” she says.

As for her weaknesses, she’s too tough on herself, she says. “I expect a lot from myself, and most of the time that is good, but I also have to tell myself that not everything is going to be good all of the time; that is just a part of life.”

Desiderio is majoring in sports administration and says she doesn’t know yet what she wants to do once she graduates. “Gymnastics is my passion, and I feel like I can’t live without it in some shape or form, so I’m trying to figure out if I want to do something in the gymnastics world or just in sports in general.”

The above appears in the January 2019 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

A former two-weight world champion, Paulie Malignaggi now brings 16 years of boxing experience to bear as a commentator for Showtime and Sky Sports.

Being a professional boxing commentator is all about picking up on the patterns of the fight, the subtle stuff, and assessing how fighters should adjust their approach before it even happens.

So says Paulie Malignaggi, who works as a boxing analyst for Showtime and Sky Sports, and who also used to work for Fox Sports 1.

“I try to involve the fans and try to make them more cognizant of what’s going on,” he says. “Sure, it’s just two guys fighting, but what you’re talking about is fighting tactically. I talk about the things I learned from my perspective as a fighter.”

Malignaggi, who’ll turn 38 this month, is a former two-weight world champion who held the IBF junior welterweight title from 2007 to 2008 and the WBA welterweight title from 2012 to 2013. He retired after his last fight in March 2017. He was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.

Although he prefers certain styles of boxing over others, he certainly can’t pick sides when he’s commentating. “Sometimes one guy has the advantage over the other guy, so I’ll tell you what’s happening,” he says. “Why is this fight going into a lull? What is this guy doing that is causing the other guy not to react? A regular fan would call that fight boring. You have to explain what’s happening, why that’s the case and how things could change.”

Malignaggi was undefeated for his first five years, suffering his first loss in June 2006 after his debut in July 2001. All the while he was climbing the ladder, “raising the bar as far as the level of opposition as to who you start fighting,” he explains.

He suffered hand injuries and had to undergo surgeries and finally got a shot at his first world title – and lost it. Naturally, he was disappointed, feeling like he came up short, but the loss also gave him motivation, he says. “You got to regroup, you got to get back on the horse.”

He got another shot at a world title a year later, and that time he clinched it. “It was determination, hard drive, work. It was years of putting in what it took.”

He was introduced to the sport as a youngster in Brooklyn, New York, after his grandmother told one of his uncles to take him to the boxing gym. “She thought it would be good for me to spend some of my energy there.”

Boxing helped him find a place in life at a time when he needed guidance. Before boxing, he explains, he didn’t have the discipline or the motivation to apply himself to any tasks, and the sport became the one thing he cared about enough to be scared to lose it.

“For the first time, I had consequences facing me,” he says. “It gave me that drive and that focus. There’s probably a million stories like mine. Some better, some worse.”

The decision to retire was simply about getting older, he says. “The workouts were getting more tough, I was more injury prone, all these things became a drag. Once you’re not passionate about something, you won’t improve, and it’s harder to improve when your body is not cooperating.”

These days, he jogs a couple of times a week and stays fit for his TV job, but doesn’t do much boxing, mostly due to his travel schedule, he says.

He travels back and forth between his homes in New York and Florida and goes a couple of times a year to Sicily, where he lived as a boy and where his father still lives.

“I love Sicily,” he says. “If I didn’t have so many things holding me back here, I would probably live there. For sure.”

The above appears in the October 2018 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

With 30-plus years of harness racing under his belt, Dave Palone has amassed an astounding 18,400 wins in more than 75,000 races.

Dave Palone has logged about 18,400 career wins in his 30-plus years as a harness race driver.

That’s an average of about 600 wins per year, with 700 or 800 wins in his better years. Twelve races a day, four days a week, and voila, you have the sport’s winningest driver.

“I’ve done it so many times, I know the horses, I’ve driven most of them, I know their tendencies,” the 56-year-old Palone says. “That’s probably the biggest edge that I have. I know a lot of the horses; I know what they need to win and what they need to race their best.”

Palone lives in Washington, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles from where he grew up. The state has the added bonus of having legalized slot machines, which exponentially increases the purse for his profession, he says.

Palone is technically a “catch driver,” meaning he doesn’t train horses, he only drives them. He used to train horses, too, when he was younger, but then got too busy with driving and turned the stable over to his younger brother, Michael.

Catch drivers show up to races after horse trainers pick them. Sometimes, they choose between two horses, he says. “It’s like any other business — you go with your better account,” he says. “If one horse has much better ability than the other horse, it’s pretty much an easy decision.”

Drivers and horses leave the starting gate at about 35 mph and immediately begin jockeying for position, according to Palone. Races are typically one mile in length, and average about 1 minute and 55 seconds. “A lot of races you usually win them or lose in the first quarter-mile,” he says.

“It’s my job to put the horse in the right spot to win the race” by not switching to overdrive too quickly or falling too far back at the start, he says. “It’s like a chess match.”

Palone fell in love with horses at a young age. He started riding in competitions with the 4-H Club, and his father bought a racehorse as a hobby. “I got hooked,” he says.

Unlike most harness race drivers, he’s not a second- or third-generation horseman but learned from his father’s horse trainer, he says.

Palone has had a couple of bad spills over the years, once puncturing a lung and once shattering a femur. “I was right back into the flow of racing within a few weeks. You just shake it off.”

Palone says he’s always been competitive. “I feel like if I’m going to be on that horse for two minutes that week, I owe it to that trainer to give it my best effort to be focused, because he spends seven days a week with that horse.”

In the last three decades there have been a lot of changes in the sport, especially in the construction of “race bikes,” which is where harness drivers sit. When Palone first started, race bikes were made of wood, then they transitioned to titanium, and now they are made of much lighter carbon fiber.

Races are also much faster, he says. “Now it’s just pure speed,” he says. “The horses are bred so well and have so much pedigree that you can race them much harder than you used to.”

Palone estimated he’s won up to $150 million in purses throughout his career, with 5 percent going to him and the rest to horse owners and trainers.

He’s now scaled back on his traveling, preferring to spend more time at home watching his younger daughters grow up and playing golf.

Still, if he meets a really good horse, he’s apt to follow it around. And he gets butterflies when there’s major money and prestige at stake in a race, he says. “I’m intense still while racing. I’m not looking to give up the colors just yet.”

The above appears in the September 2018 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

A team leader at Boston College, Sam Apuzzo netted one of her sport’s top honors while only a junior.

Sam Apuzzo, a junior at Boston College, was this year’s recipient of the prestigious Tewaaraton Award, given annually to the most outstanding American male and female college lacrosse players.

Apuzzo is the first female player from Boston College to win the award after being a top-five finalist last year. The award ceremony was held May 31 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Lacrosse is rooted in centuries of Native American tradition and “Tewaaraton” is the Mohawk name for the game, according to the award’s website.

This year, Apuzzo also was named All-Atlantic Coast Conference Attacker of the Year. She helped lead Boston College to a perfect 17-0 regular season and the team’s second consecutive trip to the national championship.

She broke the program’s single season scoring record with 88 goals after setting the record last year with 81. She’s a native of West Babylon, New York.

Here are Apuzzo’s thoughts on her sport, accomplishments and future goals.

Q — When/why did you start playing lacrosse?

A — I started playing around 4th grade. My older brother started playing a few years earlier, so initially I would pass around with him using a boy’s stick. When a few of my neighborhood friends joined the youth program, they urged me to play as well.

Q — What do you love about the game?

A — I love how fast-moving it is; there isn’t much standing around and you are constantly going.

Q — What are your strengths as a player?

A — I think one of my strengths is that I don’t give up. I try to constantly be moving and doing everything I can by working hard every minute of the game.

Q — What are your weaknesses?

A — I sometimes find myself waiting a few minutes into the game to get going and get involved.

Q — What did it feel like to win the Tewaaraton Award?

A — It was an incredible feeling. I was in shock for most of the night. It has always been a dream of mine, but I never actually thought it would be something I would achieve.

Q — You are the first Eagle to win the award in the history of the women’s lacrosse program. What does that mean to you?

A — I am very proud to be the first Eagle to win this award. The past few years my teammates and I have had a lot of success, and we are hoping that will continue and make BC a top program for years to come. I hope to set a precedent for more Eagles to win the Tewaaraton.

Q — Boston College was the NCAA women’s lacrosse championship runner-up for the last two years. What are your thoughts on that?

A — I think it shows how far our program has come in the past few years and how each year we continue to progress. It’s unfortunate that we have gotten to the championship each year and lost. However, we still have yet to hit our potential as a team, so I’m excited to see what will happen in the year to come.

Q — What is your major?

A — I am an applied psychology and human development major as well as a communication minor.

Q — What are your plans after college?

A — I’m hoping to stay in either the lacrosse or athletic world for as long as I can. However, I’m not exactly sure what I plan to do yet.

Q — What are your career goals?

A — I hope to have a successful career while still playing lacrosse and help in growing the game.

Q — How long do you see yourself playing lacrosse?

A — I can definitely see myself playing in the pro women’s lacrosse league after college or the U.S. national team if I were to make the roster.

The above appears in the August issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

Hooked on synchronized swimming after witnessing a team workout at the local YMCA, Ruby Remati has battled her way to the top of the sport in America.

When someone says “synchronized swimming,” do you picture ladies with flowered caps moving languidly through the water?

You better not, says Ruby Remati, the 2017 U.S. national champion in the solo and figures categories.

“It’s an extremely demanding sport, and it requires a lot of hours of training,” the 15-year-old says. “There are some people who look at is as a stereotype, but there are also a lot of people who find it really cool and unique. The reactions vary.”

Synchronized swimming is a unique mixture of dance, gymnastics and swimming, she explains. “It requires a lot of endurance and flexibility. We train, we do speed swimming, we do weight lifting, we train like rhythmic gymnasts do to improve flexibility.”

Unlike in the United States, the sport is popular in Russia, Spain and China, she says. “These are all the countries that are on the top right now, that are medaling. Russia, especially.”

Remati was born in Australia and holds U.S., Italian and Australian citizenship. She grew up in Andover, Mass., where she started synchronized swimming after she saw a team practice at her local YMCA. “Right away I loved the sport. I thought it was super cool,” she says. “My dad let me take a few classes, and then I joined the team.”

Her father, Battista, says it’s pretty rare for YMCAs to offer synchronized swimming. “I think that the sport found Ruby, as opposed to her finding the sport. I think we were just lucky to be in a situation where the local YMCA was a very good one.”

Remati and her parents moved in the summer of 2016 to Lafayette, Calif., so she could train full time with the national team. She has two older siblings, both in their 20s, who live on their own.

Her skills improved a great deal after moving to California, she says. At nationals last year she competed in solo, a routine set to music, and figures, which has no music and must include specific movements.

Her goal is to make Team USA for the 2020 Olympic Games, she says.

Synchronized swimming became an official Olympic sport at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The United States failed to send a team to the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, although it did have a duet team at both competitions.

“Going to the Olympics has always been one of my dreams. That wouldn’t happen if I stayed on my club team,” she says. “I’m very determined to make the Olympics.”

Her life these days consists of training six days a week from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., starting with two hours in the gym followed by training in the water the rest of the time. Before big competitions, practices can last 11 hours. She also takes high school classes online and plans to go to college.

The current senior national team consists of about a dozen young women ages 15 to 18 and one man who competes in mixed duet. Despite the team’s youthful age range, longevity isn’t unheard of, she notes, with Olympic athletes competing into their 30s and even 40s.

This year, she didn’t attend nationals because she was chosen for the senior duet team along with Anita Alvarez, a U.S. Olympian she admires. Remati’s competition schedule this spring and summer included includes China, Japan, Canada and the American Open in June, then Hungary and the UANA Pan American Championships in August.

While being on a team means focusing on patterns and synchronization, duets allow for more unique and artistic routines, she says.

“Each year, I get better during competitions,” she says. “I do get pretty nervous before competitions, but I’ve learned that to defeat your nerves during competition, you just need to train hard during practice and treat every practice like it’s a competition.”

The above appeared in the June issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

A standout at every level of women’s lacrosse, Krystin Porcella is a leader in the movement to take the sport professional.

Star athlete, coach and now general manager — Krystin Porcella has pretty much experienced all facets of women’s lacrosse.

Her philosophy is to empower athletes to make the right choices at the right time. “This applies on field and off field,” she says. “If we can develop each player to reach their potential for leadership, we have a whole team of players who have bought into the mission and are focused on the goals.”

In March 2017, Porcella was named general manager of the Baltimore Ride, one of four teams in the United Women’s Lacrosse League. She handles all aspects of running the team, including working with coaches, players and league officials, and managing the draft in selecting players.

The league is entering its third season; the other three teams are in Boston, Long Island and Philadelphia.

“Women’s professional sports is a hard concept. Our goal is to grow, but grow the right way,” she says. “As support grows for women’s professional lacrosse, we will have more options. Right now, we have tried to put the games and teams in the larger markets.”

Porcella graduated from Loyola College in Maryland, now Loyola University, and served as assistant coach at her college alma mater and head coach at her old high school. She has served as president of Top of the Bay Lacrosse since 2004 in Maryland.

She was a member of the U.S. developmental team, then assistant coach and eventually head coach of the under-19 national team that won the world championship in 2011. She called that “an honor I will cherish my whole life.”

“To coach the best athletes in lacrosse at their age group has so many unique and fun opportunities that, as a coach, you can’t wait for the next training or competition. I recall standing on the stage with the medal around my neck and thinking, ‘For this moment in time, we are the best in the world,’” she says. “Those athletes deserve so much credit for dedicating themselves to our mission and carrying out our goals.”

Porcella also coached the Welsh national lacrosse team, which she says was a very different experience, but just as rewarding.

“In Wales and other countries, athletes play because they simply love to play. They pay their own way, pay for their own equipment. The Welsh athletes do not have the youth programming that we have here in the United States, so they set aside one weekend a month to come together to train, again, covering their own expense,” she says. “It was also nice coaching a group of athletes that were so eager to learn new skills and concepts.”

Porcella, who mostly played softball growing up, started playing lacrosse when her cousin gave her an old stick. Lacrosse wasn’t offered for girls until high school, so her freshman year, Porcella and her by then “ancient stick” tried out for the team and made junior varsity.

“Sophomore year, I tried out for lacrosse, but then saw the softball team practicing and felt sad that I had put so many years into playing softball and my dad coached me all those years. So I left lacrosse tryouts and went over to softball tryouts the next day,” she recalls. “After one day of tryouts, I crawled back to the lacrosse coach, Mr. John Hughes, and asked for a second chance to try out for lacrosse. Mr. Hughes gave me that second chance and I have never looked back.”

Porcella says she wishes people knew that there are so many opportunities in lacrosse, including for travel and college scholarships.

A second league, the Women’s Professional Lacrosse League, is supposed to launch this summer. Its director is a colleague of hers, Porcella says. “I wish her the best of luck in starting her new league. My hope is that we can one day bring both leagues together under one name to benefit all of lacrosse.”

The above appeared in the March issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

With only himself for company and a sexton as his guide, he will compete to be the first of two dozen sailors to sail around the world without making landfall.

Francesco Cappelletti is the only Italian skipper among a group of hardcore, adventurous purists who’ve signed up to sail 30,000 solo miles around the globe in a race devoid of modern technology.

The 2018 Golden Globe Race will take place on the 50th anniversary of the first solo, nonstop circumnavigation done by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston during the Sunday Times Golden Globe Yacht Race in 1968.

The 2018 race starts July 1 at Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. The skippers will sail around the world via the five great capes without setting foot on land and return to Les Sables-d’Olonne. There will be four checkpoints with media rendezvous along the nine-month voyage.

“Once I accomplish something like this, there will be no doubt about my being a very strong seafarer,” he says. “That is my biggest desire in life.”

A total of 23 participants were listed in December. Cappelletti, 39, continues to raise money for his $150,000 budget, including the purchase of an Endurance 35 Ketch boat from 1975. Those who are interested in contributing can visit francescocappelletti.com.

Cappelletti has 20 years of experience as an amateur sailor and four years as a professional. He sailed the west coast of Italy on his own for about five months, going three to four days at a time without touching land, he says.

He crossed the Atlantic twice, once in 2013 from the Dominican Republic to England and France, and the second time in 2014 from Trinidad and Tobago to Italy. Both times he sailed with crews, delivering sailing boats to clients who bought them abroad.

Sailing on your own is all about balance with nature and the elements, feeling both lord of your own environment and a tiny part of a vast world, he says.

“It’s quite a thrilling experience. It’s quite different from living on the land, in every environment you can live in. The best experience you have is to rely on your own. Rely on your own experience. You estimate all the situations, your own technical skills, your own self-control.”

During the Golden Globe Race, a satellite tracker will be mounted on the boats and skippers will be able to send and receive messages at set intervals, Cappelletti says.

He also will be able to communicate with his parents and girlfriend via an old-fashioned high-frequency radio his father is building in his home in Tuscany.

He’ll bring mostly dry food — he’s a vegetarian — and a big tank of water, and he’ll collect rainwater that he can purify and mineralize. He also will bring books and blank journals, but there will be long stretches of time when he’ll be too busy managing the boat and the weather conditions.

“You go back to an animal-like state, surviving, basically,” he says. “When things are right and you can take a breath and you have a few days in a row of easy time, then you start thinking a lot.”

He will sail by following the sun and the stars, and expects to get off track with overcast skies and back on course with clear skies. “Unless I am sick and unless I lost my sextant, I will be fine,” he says of the celestial navigation tool.

Despite his enthusiasm, Cappelletti says he abandoned his plans for a time in late 2016, when he was faced with having to pay 2,000 euro on deadline. He gave up his spot for about five months, but he became reenergized when he started making connections and finding sponsors, he says.

He also started marketing himself as the only Italian in the race, a factor he didn’t give much weight to at first, he says.

“We are a small country and we are 60 million, so why not try to find some help?” he says. “Anybody who wants to help an Italian to do the Golden Globe Race, they have only one choice — it’s me.”

The above appeared in the March issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

A fly fisher for more than eight decades, she literally helped define the sport while opening the door for other women to enter it.

Ninety-one-year-old Joan Salvato Wulff, the “First Lady of Fly Fishing,” says that even after all these decades, she never fails to feel a jolt of life every time she casts into the water.

“Fly fishing puts you in touch with the natural world,” she says. “Everything we do is in tune with that.”

Salvato Wulff is a proud inductee of both the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame and the American Casting Association Hall of Fame.

The sport, she explains, requires quiet, intent observation of your immediate surroundings and an intimate knowledge of water temperature, insect life cycles and fish migration patterns.

“It’s always satisfying to stand in the river and feel the current,” she says. “It’s renewing.”

Salvato Wulff learned the sport as a little girl from her father, and won 17 national casting titles from 1943 to 1960, when she stopped competing.

She is the author of four books — the latest being “Joan Wulff’s New Fly-Casting Techniques,” published in 2012 — and is a retired trustee for the International Game Fish Association and the Atlantic Salmon Federation.

She made a name for herself in 1951 when she cast 131 feet against all-male competition and became the first woman to win the Fisherman’s Distance Event.

Her claim to fame came nine years later, though, when she cast a 161-foot fly, again as the only woman in the tournament. Ironically, her feat couldn’t be counted as a record because for that to happen, there had to be five other women in the event, she explains.

“Now that I am 91, I can say that finally there are lots of women coming into the fly fishing world,” she says.

She credits that trend to the 1992 film “A River Runs Through It.” Directed by Robert Redford, it tells the story of two brothers in rural Montana who are united by their passion for fly fishing.

The movie sparked a boom in women who wanted to attend Wulff School of Fly Fishing, which she had opened in 1978 in New York’s Catskills with her late husband, Lee Wulff. She is now married to attorney Ted Rogowski.

Salvato Wulff was a pioneer in the sport because she not only mastered its mechanics but actually named them.

“Before, to teach they would say, ‘Watch me do this,’” she says. “You wouldn’t talk about what your hand did, or what you did with your arm, or the timing.”

Her personality is to be a teacher, she says. “I can’t walk past somebody who is casting badly without going to them and asking them if I can help them.”

While she doesn’t run her school or give lectures anymore, she happily joins students when they go outdoors. “I can’t give that up,” she says. “The idea of teaching is that your reward comes in the light in the student’s eye, or their better execution of a cast.”

Anyone can become a good fly fisherman, but they have to enjoy nature and be able to withstand the elements, she says.

The most difficult fish to catch, in her estimation, is the permit, a saltwater fish that has been particularly elusive for her.

“When I see a permit in the water, there is an electricity that comes to my body, and my mind,” she explains. “They will come right up to your fly and just not take it. You can see it. I’ve only caught a couple of 5- and 6-pound permit, and I really want to catch one of 15 pounds. I want to have enough life left in me to do that.”

Then again, she says, she’s also learned to relish the simple act of fishing. And she loves what she calls “fishing through somebody else.”

“If someone else catches a fish and you see it or hear about it, you know exactly how happy they are,” she says, “because you know how it feels yourself.”

The above appeared in the March issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.