Elisa Cusma (ITA) (© Lorenzo Sampaolo)
Italian 800 metres runner Elisa Cusma seems gradually to be following in the footsteps of Gabriella Dorio, 1984 Olympic 1500m gold medallist.
In March 2008, Cusma who has long been regarded by many Italian fans as the natural heir of Dorio finally broke the Italian indoor 800m record during the semi-finals of the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, clocking 2:00.36 to qualify for the World Indoor final. With this time she improved the long-standing national indoor record set by Dorio who ran 2:00.85 in Paris in 1982. The day after her big achievement Cusma ended her successful World Indoor Championships with a sixth place in the final.
“I am very pleased with my Italian record”, said Cusma in Valencia. “I hoped to break the Italian record. Breaking the national record set by a legend like Gabriella Dorio is like a dream come true because it was a long-standing limit which was held by an Olympic champion. I hope to reconfirm this result next year.”
“I prepared very well for the indoor season with my coach Claudio Guizzardi. I only regret that I could have run better in the final”, said Cusma.
Running for fun
Cusma began running for fun when she was 11-years-old when she won a mixed cross country race but she took athletics more seriously at the age of 18. In the early stages of her career she ran for the local Mollificio Modenese Athletics Club in her native town Modena.
However she stopped running in 2001 when she finished school where she got the diploma at the Agricultural School. Later she worked in a restaurant in Piumazzo, a small town near Modena where she lives with her father Lucio Cusma, a former European boxing champion in the lightweight category in the years between 1983 and 1984 when he became famous as the “Rocky” from Bologna. It was Lucio who always encouraged his daughter to practice sport. Elisa also tried swimming, skating, dancing and basketball.
“My father gives me some advice. He follows my races on television but he does not attend them,” said Cusma.
The turning point in her career came in 2004 when she was recruited by the Military Sport Group of the Italian Army, which gave her financial independence so allowing her to pursue her ambitions in sport.
Cusma has always been coached by Guizzardi, a pupil of marathon “guru” Lucio Gigliotti, the man who contributed to the success of Gelindo Bordin, Maria Guida and Stefano Baldini. “For me Claudio is a second father. We have a great relationship. He helped me a lot. I thank him because he did not push me hard when I was younger.”
Cusma’s career really took off during the 2005 summer when she started her season with a PB of 2:05.97 and after continuos improvements to her previous lifetime best she finally lowered this record to 2:00.96 in the Lignano Sabbiadoro International meeting, a time which qualified her for the World Championships in Helsinki 2005.
She arrived in Helsinki without any past international experience and did not get through the first round. But this did not discourage the young athlete who continued her progress already emerging the next season as a possible challenger to the long-standing 1:57.66 Italian outdoor record set by Dorio in Pisa in 1980, the year before Cusma was born.
At the famous end-of-season Rieti IAAF Grand Prix meeting in 2006 Cusma became the fourth Italian woman in history to run the 800 metres in under two minutes, establishing the second best time ever with 1:58.90. Cusma is the only Italian runner other than Dorio to dip under the 2 minutes more than once.
“I think that breaking Dorio’s outdoor record is not within my reach at the moment. To give the idea of what this record means it’s enough to say that this time under 1:58 set 28 years ago is still a world-class result”, said Cusma .
Consistently sub-2; eight times in 2008
Cusma continued her progress steadily in 2007 when she ran 1:58.63 in the World Championships semifinals in Osaka, though this lifetime best performance was not enough to qualify for the final. However, in 2007 she became a consistent sub-2 performer dipping four times under the 2 minutes barrier in the major Golden League and Grand Prix meetings with a notable third place in the Zürich Weltklasse meeting.
This year she has continued to make sub-2 her norm, and has run well in the meetings of the World Athletics Tour finishing second in Ostrava and London, and was a regular face in the Golden League meetings.
Her seasonal best came in the Milan Notturna International meeting where she ran 1:59.22 but missed out on a place in the Olympic final when running 1:59.52 in the semi finals in the Bird’s Nest.
After Beijing she ran in one of the best races of the season in the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels where she finished fourth in 1:59.26 in the “Million Dollar” run of Pamela Jelimo. Then thanks to her second consecutive win in the Palio della Quercia in Rovereto in 1:59.84 Cusma scored valuable points to qualify for the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, and in the German city Cusma finished sixth, capping a successful season in which she broke the 2-minutes barrier eight times.
“I am happy with my season because I ran very consistently under the 2 minutes barrier. I enjoy running often in the European circuit because these races give me the chance to run against my strongest rivals frequently. I have often been criticized because I run too many races but I find it is the right strategy because I use competitions as training.”
“Athletics remained a fun activity for me until the 2005 summer. That year I realized that I could emerge by taking it more seriously.”
Diego Sampaolo for the IAAF
