Alice Betto

Following a spectacular 2021, she took time away from the sport to start a family, but with baby Ettore born last November, the 35-year-old is on the comeback trail as she rejoins the competitive fray.

As far as Super League is concerned, that means she’ll be on the roster of reigning champions, Bahrain Victorious Scorpions for the four-race series, lining up alongside compatriot Verena Steinhauser and hoping for better fortunes than in her previous foray into the format in 2021 where a post-Olympic appearance in the London SLT leg provided a baptism of fire and she finished 20th.

That blip belied what a phenomenal year 2021 was for Betto though, who had begun with a 12th place in the Lisbon World Cup, before an 11th in Leeds WTCS leading into the Olympics. 

In Tokyo, she produced a superb performance to place seventh and leading Italian, although given her test event result of finishing runner-up at the venue two years earlier, it shouldn’t have raised too many eyebrows.

Refusing to relax post Games, Betto helped her country pick up a podium in the mixed team relay in Montreal WTCS before she finished 13th in the Championship Finals in Edmonton, and then eighth in Hamburg as the 2022 season started early.

To top it off Betto had also competed in the 2021 Arena Games – finishing eighth in both London and Rotterdam – and ended the year as national champion at both the sprint and standard distance.

While the string of results are impressive, it was in no way a breakout 12 months for a star who has been performing at an elite level since securing podiums in European Cup races as far back as Quarteira and Geneva as far back as 2010.

Highlights include a ninth place in Stockholm in the 2012 World Series, a fifth place in the London Grand Final in 2013 and a fourth place at the same Hyde Park venue the following year.

With Britain a happy hunting ground for the Italian, she also claimed her first World Series podium with third place in Leeds in 2017 before posting an impressive sixth place in the Bermuda leg of the series a year later. 

There was another career-highlight in 2019 when she finished fourth in the Grand Final in Lausanne before the enforced break because of the Covid pandemic put racing on hold.

If that wasn’t a hiatus any athlete wanted, then Betto’s next departure from the sport was for far happier reasons, when she became pregnant at the start of 2022. Returning for the Italian middle distance championships in May where she finished second, she is now back competing on the WTCS circuit too, where if the standard of competition didn’t give a shock to the system, the bracing 13-degree waters off the Sunderland coast in her return WTCS race probably did.