Italy are no longer the small team they once were.
it's been quite some time that we're winning cadet and junior world gold medals, now we have a new generation of players that are definitely among the best in the world.
now it's time to take the fruit of all this work.
and when it doesn't happen, it's frustrating.
and must be said, you can't always be happy when you don't hit your target, as ambitious as it might be.
Bellandi is the no.1 in the world (maybe only Wagner could argue about it) and has always beaten all of her rivals in the past 2 years (except the German).
not winning Gold is definitely underperforming.
the same is for Lombardo...he's a generational talent, the only man capable to beat Hifumi Abe (twice) at 66kg before he couldn't make the weight anymore (and he paid the prize for that in Tokyo) and had to switch at 73kg, where he's quite clearly the strongest man in the class after Shoei Ono's retirement.
as I wrote, he was just unlucky, bur still, he didn't come home with a more than expected (and deserved gold).
Giuffrida lost to Pupp, who's not at her level.
she had a clean highway to the gold medal match (with Krasniqi, Buchard and Abe all in the other side of the table draw) and she missed it.
then she won the bronze medal vs Krasniqi only bewcause the girl from Kosovo was not on top of her game after losing the semifinal match.
to me, all those results are good, but still below the expectation.