A godfather on the ice
When Frangipani skated out on the ice in Prague, both of his grandparents were on his mind.
“A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man,” the words, spoken by the film character Don Vito Corleone in Italian, rang out over the arena as Frangipani launched into his free skate.
It had been a battle for the athlete to get to the 2026 Worlds, given the three months he missed due to injuries, and the results were far from his personal best. Frangipani had to downgrade his program by replacing the two to three quads he usually does in a free skate with triple jumps and struggled to keep his stamina throughout the four minutes.
But his program showed character, and the audience got behind him, clapping over the music.
“There were a few moments where I was giving up, but I tried to release, to put up a fight,” Frangipani said. “My legs were not there anymore. My heart, I was feeling like it was exploding, but when people started clapping in the second half, I said, ‘OK, let’s push a little more, let’s go over this limit again’.”
Frangipani finished 23rd overall, but it was about more than placements for the Italian figure skater at this Worlds edition.
“The last months, it was hard. I had really been through a lot, and that took me a little bit to hate the figure skating,” Frangipani said. “For me, it was really hard to go on ice and put myself through practise. But when I got the call for Worlds, I told myself, ‘I have to. It doesn’t matter. I want to go to Worlds. I have this possibility, that it’s a chance that you don’t always have it’.
“I came here to give everything I could and try to enjoy it. Even if I had this hating on figure skating at the moment, but I did it. I managed to enjoy it.”