Olympic speed skater with Tallahassee ties is back for Winter Olympics

Marina Brown
 |  Tallahassee Democrat correspondent

Floridian athletes representing Team USA at the winter Olympics

Meet 11 talented athletes with Florida connections representing Team USA at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.

The “Blonde Angel,” Italian Arianna Fontana – the short track speed skating Olympian and part-time Tallahasseean – is set to participate in her sixth Winter Olympics.

Married to Maclay School and Florida State University graduate and retired speed-skater Anthony Lobello, her long-time coach and mentor, Fontana has already won 11 Olympic Medals, making her the most prolific Italian medalist in the history of the Winter Games.

This week, she hopes to win a few more at the 2026 XXV Winter Olympics, the Milan Cortina, Italy Games — at the age of 35. Fontana won her first medal at 15 in Turin, Italy.

But what keeps an athlete at it — long after the so-called peak years when the “fire” is supposed to calm? We’ve all seen Lebron James, Novak Djokovic, and now Lindsay Vonn, who well into their 30s or 40s are pursuing basketball, tennis, and downhill skiing as if they were teenagers — and achieving medals and cups that may make the youngsters green.

Dedication. Commitment. And perhaps that special fire that only a few are born with are only three of the necessities, besides a God-given talent, that world-champion athletes bring to their sport.

In the case of Fontana, she ascribes something else to her success, the most recent of which was just last month in the Netherlands when she won Gold at the 1500 Meter European Championships. Midway into her 30s, Fontana says that the “balance” of hard work, knowing when to rest, what to eat, and a happy home life has kept her competing.

The secret to Arianna Fontana’s success

Strenuous weight-training; sprints; not eating sugar or dairy are part of the rigorous training her husband/coach Anthony Lobello maintains.

“Without those foods, my body is less inflamed — and I recover faster,” Fontana said in a recent Reuters profile. “I can’t train like a 20-year-old anymore, but, I’m stubborn.”

Fontana has taken a year off in the past to rest her mind and body, but says that “I still have that itch in my belly to win.”

As her coach and life-partner, Anthony Lobello has “overseen” Fontana’s regimen since 2014 when they married. With Italian grandparents, Lobello had also been able to race on the Italian team in Sochi that year. As they became a couple, he began to suggest changes in Fontana’s training regimen.

For a time, they left the Italian team when coaches there disagreed with his ideas. But Fontana was only becoming stronger and winning more races. Today, she is once again skating for Italy, and in fact, carried the Italian Tricolore flag at the Opening Ceremonies on Feb. 6.

Highly focused, Lobello, like any good coach, provides whispered information about competitors, “No. 1 always passes at three laps to go…” In the Reuters profile, he described “Arianna as a Formula 1 car…you need to put high-octane fuel in her. If she’s a Formula I car, I’m the engineer.”

But when training comes to an end for the day, it is their relationship that takes priority.

“At 6 p.m., we don’t talk about skating or training anymore,” Fontana told Reuters. “Once a week we go out to dinner, the theatre, or for a walk… just try to really separate the two figures… coach and athlete, husband and wife.”

The pair have even made a cooking video together in honor of the Milan Cortina Games. Featuring classic Italian tiramisu, Fontana is seen giggling at a stumbling Lobello as he forgets to “dip those in coffee.” It seems the work/life balance is functioning perfectly for the Olympic star and her coach.

Road to gold runs through Tallahassee

Like many gifted youngsters who go on to have exceptional careers, Lobello had taken to sports early.

Lobello was born in Tallahassee and attended Holy Comforter, Maclay schools and FSU. A born athlete, he took to in-line skating immediately. But with a goal of being an Olympian one day, he would need to switch to ice skates in order to compete in an Olympic sport. 

After only 36 months on the ice, by 2006 Lobello was on the U.S. Olympic team. Two years later he was ranked 7th fastest in the world in the 500 meters, and two years, later 5th, ahead of Gold Medalist, Apolo Ohno. Yet due to ill health, he didn’t make the Olympic team that year.

Frustrated, he says he “began building a system of training that would work for me.” He devised a regimen of “incredible” intensity — weights, diet, “a different kind of off-ice program.” And he made the U.S. team again in 2014.

Though he didn’t medal, Lobello says he had learned many things: most important that a program must be individualized and tough.

It was in 2012 that he had met Arianna Fontana, a wunderkind Italian speedskater who had already won many European championships. At 15, she had won Bronze in the 2006 Torino Olympics and again in 2010 in Vancouver. Later she would go on to win Silver in Sochi in 2014 and back-to-back golds in Pyeongchang and Beijing, among others.

In 2014, Lobello, whose Italian heritage enabled him to obtain dual citizenship, would become part of the Italian skating team as well. It was also the year that the pair would marry. And the year that Fontana would begin to follow not the team workout regimen, but that of Lobello.

And in 2022, her passionate rink-side “golden kiss” of her husband and coach, who had a Florida State University cap attached to his belt, went viral after she won the 500-meter race.

“I love Tallahassee,” Lobello told the Democrat in a previous interview, noting that he proposed to his wife in Florida’s capital city after a home-cooked Italian meal. “Who knew my wife would love Springtime Tallahassee too? Who knew she loved to fish?”

The couple, who say their favorite restaurants are Gordos, El Jalisco’s or Table 23, is even renovating a home in Killearn.

“I had always thought of Florida as beaches,” she told Tallahassee Magazine in a 2022 interview. “Miami and traffic. I love the quiet of this city and the people.”

How to watch Team Tallahassee in the Olympics

Here’s how to watch the speed skating events. All times Eastern.

Monday, Feb. 9

• 11:30 a.m.: Women’s 1000m | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com
• Noon: Women’s 1000m | NBC
• 6:45 p.m.: Women’s 1000m (re-air) | USA

Saturday, Feb. 14

• 10 a.m.: Women’s team pursuit quarterfinals | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com
• 9:30 p.m.: Women’s team pursuit quarterfinals (re-air) | USA

Sunday, Feb. 15

• 11 a.m.: Women’s 500m | NBC | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com

Tuesday, Feb. 17

• 8:30 a.m.: Women’s team pursuit semifinals | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com
• 10:20 a.m.: Women’s team pursuit final | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com

Friday, Feb. 20

• 10:30 a.m.: Women’s 1500m | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com
• 1 p.m.: Women’s 1500m | NBC

Saturday, Feb. 21

• 9 a.m.: Women’s mass start | USA | Peacock and NBCOlympics.com
• 10 a.m.: Women’s mass start | NBC

This story contains previously reported information.