San Marino Wins First Olympic Medal!

Bronze in the women’s trap shooting competition!

Well, here we go! Last night Virginia time, Sanders discovered not one but two nations won either their first medal or their first gold medal at these Olympics. Now each nation gets its own tout! Got to read the blog to see about the other nation! San Marino won bronze!

The Republic of San Marino is a tiny nation in Europe. Completely surrounded by Italy. Landlocked. Here is the Britannica account of this small and fascinating nation. Started by Christians fleeing persecution about 300 AD, one was St. Marinus, (A lay evangelist – man I like this nation better and better as I read more!) after whom the nation is named, and it is on the slopes of a mountain (Mt. Titano). I almost persuaded my father to take us there when we went to Italy. But we did cross the Rubicon – the tiny river that Caesar crossed to declare himself in rebellion against the so-called Roman Republic (which was dead by that time pretty much!).

There was another personal incident involving San Marino. In my senior year of high school we had a fun trivia contest where there would be a question read during home room and the first student who wrote the answer and took it to the room indicated for the answer got touted the next morning. Let’s see: trivia, showing off and a tout, to boot? The future blogger Sanders is all in! One day the quiz question was: World’s smallest landlocked republic. I knew this answer – wrote San Marino and raced to a nearby home room and the next morning awaited the tout! NO TOUT! I cannot remember who got it or if nobody did but San Marino was NOT the answer! The theory of the teacher in charge of quiz question said because San Marino is elected by two princes, it was not a republic.

Well, now many Americans will hear or read about the Republic of San Marino – the tiny republic of over 33,000 (not a misprint – thirty three thousand not million but thousand people live in San Marino) has its first Olympic medalist:

Alessandra Perilli came in third in women’s trap shooting behind a Slovakian and USA. Good enough for bronze (Perilli was fourth in 2012) this time. Here is a great Reuters article on it.

“We had two sleepless nights. We watched everything live and as soon as we knew that she had won a medal we were in tears,” Perilli’s father Claudio told ANSA.

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“This is the first medal for me and for my country. We are a small country but very proud.”

I am sure Alessandra Perilli will be and is a national hero. She gets here at this blog in strict accordance with the Sanders Olympic Policy the victory lap with the flag (The coat of arms has “LIBERTAS” on it – got to like that!), the national anthem (here it is), and this tout. Congrats to Alessandra Perilli!

One more thing: I like the unusual spelling of her first name. I can safely predict that there will be a slight uptick in girls named Alessandra in 2021.