Ilaria Brugnoli
Reggio Emilia
Ilaria Brugnoli, born in 1987, is a Paralympic athlete from Reggio Emilia. She has an Arts degree from the University of Bologna and has had two lifelong passions: running and the mountains. She has nurtured them and often combined them in tough but impressive mountain races. In addition to these she loves ski mountaineering and climbing, which have brought her to the nearby Apennines and to the Alps. It was all smooth sailing until 2016 when she experienced a very tough setback. At the end of the year, she received her first diagnosis of some issues with her immune system, which was followed by two more diagnoses of autoimmune diseases. She never gave up sport, not even after the autumn of 2018 when her health problems resulted in almost complete blindness. In 2019, after a torn meniscus, she started biking, became hooked and racked up kilometres even during the pandemic, at home on her exercise bike.
Soon after the lockdown, she took her first steps into the world of Paralympic triathlon. A fitting choice, since in 2021 she won the Ips Paratriathlon circuit and in 2022 first place in the Italian duathlon championship in San Benedetto del Tronto and triathlon in Marina di Massa. In 2021, she met Obiettivo3 at the Bike Festival in Rimini, sent her application and was recruited. In the O3 team she also began competing in paracycling and in tandem with Giorgia Bonetti won the Marina Di Massa and Dueville 2022 races, which added to her success at the Italian Paraduathlon Championships. Thanks to sport, Ilaria can let off steam, and is always aiming for one goal at a time. She has goals that are also outside competitive sport, as she plans to get another degree in nutrition biology.
