He defines it luck. We call it talent. However, neither of the two terms is able to express all what it means to live the life of a champion: commitment, passion and a lot of effort. Tadei Pivk carries the mark of his unstoppable successes in his long legs, thin muscles of the arms, in his eyes full of light, which can talk more than himself, discrete and shy man.
Identikit of the star player
Tadj Pivk was born in 1981 in Gemona. He lives very close to Tarvisio, at the extreme part of Italy, close to Slovenia and Austria. In everyday life Tad, how his friends call him, works on the lifts of Tarvisio, surrounded by his mountains.
Runner of the ski
Tadei is currently the strongest Skyrunner in Italy and claims several victories. Is it only a matter of luck, then? Not at all. The passion for running starts at 22 years old; before that age Tad used to jump with good results, but without fully finding complete satisfaction in his athletic performances. He felt he still had to give and do something. The degree for being a mechanical expert and his usual job on the Friulian sport facilities, do not act against his dream: becoming a professional athlete. Thanks to the mountains, silent landscapes and solitary peaks of Tarvisio, Tadei discovers his passion and one day, looking towards the valley and clefts he told himself “lets go running”. From that moment Tad has not stopped and every step has become a climbing towards the sky.
Who has legs, has mind as well
Luck and predisposition without continuous objectives, without ambition for overcoming the limits “avoiding to exaggerate – specifies Tadei – because stressing the body without knowledge of the facts means going against negative residuals of long duration” Only a matter of body? In reality the highest effort is mental. “The greatest difficulty that I face in my profession is being able to transmit how much this job is hard at a psychological level. The engine is in the mind and it is where I focus. The body is shaped by the efforts, but the biggest training is the one made on oneself and on the mind”-.
The victories
In 2008 the first rewards arrived. From that moment on there has been a continuous escalation that brought Tad to be the first Italian to win the 2015 world cup of Skyrunning, and the second in 2016! Before these world awards, Pivk gained the ones of Italian and regional champion, a gold tris that noone have ever reached before. However, the biggest victory for Tadei has not yet arrived: “I prefer not focusing too much on my victories, they could become limits. I try to have a continuous planning in my job, to look at always new and exciting challenges. Because, it is not important what you find at the end of the run, but what you experience, what you feel, while you are running”-.