Zoe Tessarolo

Italian 400-metre runner | Born: January 19, 2003, Vicenza Province, Veneto, Italy | Club: Atletica Vicentina (Vicenza) | Technical Sponsor: Joma

There is a particular kind of athlete who does their best work when the stakes are highest — someone who gathers themselves on the day that matters most and delivers results that define a season. Zoe Tessarolo is becoming that kind of athlete. The twenty-three-year-old quarter-miler from the Veneto region of northeastern Italy has spent the better part of a decade accumulating titles, personal bests, and an ever-growing collection of national-team appearances, and she arrived at her peak moment to date — the 2025 Italian under-23 championship — having run faster than she ever had in her life. That performance, the best among all Italian women aged 23 and under, earned her a place in the Italian delegation to the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo: her first senior senior call-up to the *maglia azzurra*, and a milestone she had been working toward since she first stepped onto a track in Breganze as a ten-year-old.

Roots and Early Life

Zoe Tessarolo was born on January 19, 2003, in the Province of Vicenza, in the heart of Italy’s Veneto region. She grew up in and around the Breganze area — a compact, vineyard-covered community in the foothills of the Piccole Dolomiti, better known as the birthplace of some of Italy’s finest wines than as a hotbed of world-class sprint talent. But Breganze and its neighboring towns have produced serious athletes across many disciplines, and the local sporting culture runs deep. For Tessarolo, it was the track that called earliest and most insistently.

Her first competitive outings date to 2013, when she was a ten-year-old beginner with CSI FIAMM Atletica Provincia di Vicenza, a club connected to the Breganze area that competed under various affiliated names through her years in the youth ranks. From the very beginning, her results across multiple events suggested an athlete who was not simply fast but genuinely versatile — a multi-event competitor whose athletic intelligence was already evident in how she moved and competed. Those early years produced wins in the sprints, the hurdles, and the jumps at local meets, but also an early understanding that her most natural weapon was over longer distances on the track.

One of those who helped shape her athletic character in those formative years was her coach Lorenzo Zoccante, who worked with her through her emergence as a nationally competitive cadet. The Veneto athletics community is tight-knit, and the club environment at CSI FIAMM provided both the competitive structure and the technical grounding that young athletes in the region rely on before progressing to higher levels. A one-time ski enthusiast who trained on the slopes above Cortina d’Ampezzo in winters, Tessarolo was already showing the drive to push herself across disciplines — a characteristic that would later manifest in her willingness to compete across hurdles, sprints, and jumps alongside her primary event.

The Cadette Years: A National Champion Emerges (2017–2018)

The Italian athletics system organizes youth competition through a series of age categories that provide clear milestones for development. For Tessarolo, the cadette years (under-16) were the period in which she announced herself as a genuine national-level talent. Her specialty in this category was the 300 metres — a distance that sits at the intersection of sprint and endurance, demanding both raw speed and the tactical discipline to hold form under fatigue — and she proved exceptionally well-suited to it.

At the 2017 Italian cadette championships in Cles, she claimed a bronze medal in the 300 metres, a result that put her firmly on the Italian athletics map. It was a competitive field and a meaningful podium, and the performance established her as one of the best young quarter-lap runners in the country. In 2018, training under Zoccante’s guidance in Vicenza, she improved markedly and returned to the national championships with a clear intention to step up. At the Italian cadette championships held at Rieti’s Stadio Guidobaldi — a historic athletics venue with decades of records and title-winners written into its track — she ran 40.02 in the 300 metres despite racing through rain, breaking her personal best by seven-hundredths and claiming the Italian title. It was her first national championship gold as an individual, and national federation coverage noted the combination of competitive aggression and composure under adversity that had characterized her run.

That 2018 season also contained broader evidence of her versatility. At the Italian cadette championships in Palermo, she reached the 400 metres final and ran 57.87, placing fifth — a solid result in her early competitive encounters with the full lap. She was also racing in the pentathlon, in the hurdles, and in the jumps at club and regional level, giving her coaches a more complete picture of her athletic profile while building the physical base that would support increasingly specialized quarter-mile work in the years ahead.

Moving Up: Allieve Season and the Transfer to Atletica Vicentina (2019)

In 2019, reaching the allieve (under-18) category, Tessarolo made two significant decisions. She transferred to Atletica Vicentina — one of northern Italy’s most successful athletics clubs, based at Vicenza’s stadium and backed by the Brazzale dairy corporation, which gives the club its distinctive orange-and-white colours and a financial stability that supports year-round coaching and competition travel. It was a step up in both the competitive environment and the institutional resources available to her. And it proved immediately productive.

Her first season at Vicentina saw her compete across a wider range of events than ever. She ran the 400 metres hurdles, recorded a personal best in the 400m flat (56.80 in June, her first serious time over the full lap), and at the Italian allieve championships heptathlon in Bovolone, she scored 4,321 points across seven events — a result that reflected how developed she was as a complete athlete. She cleared 1.56 in the high jump, ran 16.06 in the 100 metres hurdles, jumped 5.27 in the long jump, and put the shot 9.26 metres, all while producing running times that confirmed her primary identity as a sprinter-quarter-miler. She was third in the heptathlon that day, a result that says something about both her breadth and her limits: she was not a specialist in the multi-events, but she was competitive there too.

It was also in 2019 that she was selected for the Italian allieve team at the national championships, where she ran 56.80 to place in the 400 metres heat field. The foundation was being laid for what would follow in the junior years: a focused, systematic attack on the one-lap event that would become, definitively, her calling.

The Junior Years: Building Toward the International Stage (2021–2022)

Transitioning into the juniores category (under-20) brought Tessarolo into direct competition with the best young quarter-milers in Italy, and she more than held her own. The 2021 season was particularly significant: she ran consistently under 56 seconds and broke into the 55-second range for the first time with genuine regularity, her training at Atletica Vicentina having sharpened both her fitness and her competitive confidence.

The Italian junior championships at Grosseto in 2021 produced a 55.30 performance in the 400 metres final — a meaningful personal best at that stage of her career — and later that summer she received one of the biggest compliments a young Italian athlete can earn: a call-up to the national junior team for the European Athletics U20 Championships in Tallinn, Estonia. She competed in the 400 metres heats, running 55.32, and although the result did not carry her through to the final, the experience of wearing the azzurra vest at a major continental championship left its mark.

The 2022 season saw continued progress. She ran 55.62 in the 400 metres to claim second place at the Italian junior championships in Rieti — her first national junior medal in the 400 — and was named to the Italian squad for the World Athletics U20 Championships in Cali, Colombia. She participated as a member of the Italian 4×400 relay team at those world championships, running the third leg of the Italian quartet alongside Gloria Kabangu, Martina Canazza, and Nancy Demattè. The relay finished twelfth overall, but the exposure to world-championship competition — to the atmosphere, the scale, and the caliber of the opposition — was exactly the kind of formative experience the Italian federation seeks for its most promising young athletes. Cali 2022 was the kind of trip that accelerates development in ways a domestic training schedule cannot fully replicate.

The Promesse Years: Personal Bests and the First Italian Title (2023–2025)

Entering the promesse (under-23) age group in 2023, Tessarolo began the process of establishing herself as the top Italian athlete in her cohort at 400 metres. It was a competitive field — Nancy Demattè, Clarissa Vianelli, Alessia Seramondi, and Sara Cirillo were among the talented contemporaries she was racing against — and positions in relay squads and championship selections would depend on who ran fastest when it mattered.

The 2023 outdoor season produced a sixth-place finish at the Italian promesse championships (55.17), solid but not yet a podium. The work continued through winter and into 2024, when a new personal best arrived: at the Italian promesse championships in Rieti in July, she ran 53.50 to finish second and announce herself emphatically as a contender for the top spot. That mark moved her into a higher tier of Italian women’s 400 metres, and it suggested the 53-second barrier — the threshold that separates competitive from elite at the European level — was well within her range.

In 2024 she also competed in the 400 metres hurdles for the first time as a senior-eligible athlete, running 1:02.35 in September at Rieti — evidence that she continued to test the limits of her versatility even as her 400m flat career was accelerating.

Then came 2025, and the Italian promesse championships in Grosseto. On July 5, competing on the track of Grosseto’s Stadio Zecchini — a historically meaningful venue in Italian athletics — Zoe Tessarolo ran 53.46 seconds in the 400 metres final to win the national under-23 title. It was a new personal best by four hundredths, and it came in a final where all three of the leading Italian contenders posted improvements. FIDAL coverage noted that the result “sparked excitement” among the 400-metre specialists, with Tessarolo emerging victorious over Clarissa Vianelli (53.61) and Nancy Demattè (53.81) in one of the finest domestic junior quarter-mile races of the year. She was, at that moment, the fastest Italian woman in the under-23 age group in the world.

Bergen and Tokyo: Onto the World Stage

The 2025 season brought two major international tests, and they illustrated both the promise and the learning curve that come with graduating to senior competition.

First came the European Athletics U23 Championships in Bergen, Norway, in July 2025. In the individual 400 metres, Tessarolo ran 54.51 — a physically understandable drop-off from her Italian championship form, as the semifinal field was considerably more demanding — and finished fifth, just outside the finalists. It was the kind of result that teaches something important: what it feels like when opponents of genuine European caliber are pushing every metre, when the race goes out faster and demands a different kind of mental and physical response. She did not advance to the 400m final, but she was far from done in Bergen.

In the 4×400 relay, she was part of the Italian squad that produced one of the week’s highlights. In the semifinal, running the second leg with a split of approximately 52.7 seconds, Tessarolo was one of four contributors to a 3:31.73 performance that established a new Italian under-23 record in the event. It was the fastest the Italian women’s U23 relay had ever run, and it sent the team into the final as genuine medal contenders. The final saw the Italian quartet finish eighth, in 3:32.84, but the semifinal time confirmed that the squad — including Tessarolo as one of its key components — was capable of something genuinely fast when everything aligned.

Then came the call that defines a chapter in any Italian athlete’s career: selection for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, in September 2025. Tessarolo was included in Italy’s 4×400 relay squad as one of the full delegation’s 90 members — the largest Italian team in the history of the World Championships — in what was described explicitly as her “first call-up to the senior national team.” She was one of four Italian athletes making their first senior Worlds appearance that year. In Tokyo, she traveled as part of a relay group that also included established names such as Alice Mangione and Anna Polinari; she was named in the squad and fulfilled the duties of relay reserve through the competition, as Italy’s relay navigated the heats and semifinals en route to an eighth-place finish in the final. The experience of being in the Japan National Stadium, in the environment of a senior World Championships, as part of Italy’s most ambitious delegation ever, was precisely the kind of milestone the federation had been building toward.

Current Season and Personal Bests

The 2026 season has seen Tessarolo extend her capabilities indoors. At the Italian indoor championships in Ancona in February 2026, she ran 54.94 in the 400 metres — her best indoor time over the full lap — and 24.81 in the 200 metres, the latter a mark that reflects the genuine sprint foundation underpinning her 400m performance. She is competing at the senior level, registered now as a seniores (no longer age-restricted to under-23 categories), and the indoor results confirm that her development continues at an encouraging pace.

Her World Athletics ranking currently stands at number 443 globally in the women’s 400 metres — a position consistent with an athlete who is competitive at the upper reaches of the European under-23 level and beginning to establish herself in senior international competition.

Club: Atletica Vicentina

Tessarolo has been a member of Atletica Vicentina since 2019, and the club has been a central pillar of her development through the junior and promesse years. Founded and based in Vicenza, the club carries a proud institutional identity: its men’s team has won multiple Italian under-23 society championships, and the women’s team is consistently among the top in the Veneto region. Backed by Brazzale S.p.A., the dairy company best known for its Gran Moravia cheese, the club operates a comprehensive athletic program across all events and age groups, with strong relay traditions that have consistently developed national-team performers.

Atletica Vicentina competes in its distinctive orange colours, and the club’s technical kit is supplied by Joma. The club atmosphere — which Italian athletics writing consistently describes in terms of team solidarity and collective ambition — has clearly suited Tessarolo, who has appeared regularly in relay squads throughout her time there. Her contribution to the Italian under-23 relay record in Bergen was emblematic of how the Vicentina relay culture shapes its athletes.

Personal Bests and Statistics

Selected Career Highlights

• 2017: Bronze, Italian cadette championships, 300m (Cles)
• 2018: Gold, Italian cadette championships, 300m (Rieti) — 40.02 personal best; 5th, Italian cadette championships, 400m (Palermo)
• 2019: Transferred to Atletica Vicentina; competed in allieve heptathlon (4,321 pts, 3rd, Bovolone)
• 2021: Italian junior championships, 400m — ran 55.30 in final; European Athletics U20 Championships, Tallinn — competed in 400m heats (55.32)
• 2022: Silver, Italian junior championships, 400m (55.62, Rieti); World Athletics U20 Championships, Cali — member of Italian 4×400 relay team (12th)
• 2023: First promesse season; 6th, Italian promesse championships, 400m (55.17, Agropoli)
• 2024: Silver, Italian promesse championships, 400m (53.50, Rieti — personal best at the time)
• 2025: Gold, Italian promesse championships, 400m (53.46, Grosseto — personal best); European Athletics U23 Championships, Bergen — 5th in 400m individual (54.51), 8th in 4×400 relay final; 4×400 relay Italian U23 record (3:31.73) set in semifinals; World Athletics Championships, Tokyo — member of Italian senior 4×400 squad (first senior national team call-up)
• 2026 (indoor): 54.94 (400m), 24.81 (200m) at Ancona — personal indoor bests in both events
• World Athletics ranking: #443 women’s 400m

The Bigger Picture

Italian women’s quarter-mile running has historically been fertile ground, producing athletes capable of competing at European and global finals. The relay tradition in particular — built over years of careful development at clubs like Atletica Vicentina, Studentesca Rieti, Novatletica Chieri, and Quercia Dao Conad — consistently generates competitive 4×400 squads. Within that tradition, Tessarolo occupies a meaningful position: a regional product from the Veneto who has progressed through every level of the Italian system without shortcuts, earned each national team placement on merit, and who sits, at 23, precisely at the inflection point where athletic careers either plateau or take off.

The 53.46 that won her the 2025 Italian under-23 title is a time that places her in genuine contention for European-level finals as she transitions to unrestricted senior competition. The average Italian finalist at a European Championship in the women’s 400 metres runs somewhere between 51 and 53 seconds — the gap is real, but it is a gap that serious, well-coached athletes at 23 can close over two or three seasons of sustained improvement. Her relay experience — the Bergen U23 record, the Tokyo World Championships trip — has given her a taste of what that level demands.

What comes next is the work. And everything in Tessarolo’s career to this point suggests she is prepared to do it.

Social Media

Zoe Tessarolo can be followed on Instagram at @zoetessarolo_ and on Facebook at her athlete page. Atletica Vicentina, her club, maintains an active presence at atleticavicentina.com and on social media, where it regularly covers her competitions and national team call-ups. Her World Athletics profile is maintained at worldathletics.org under athlete code 14863270.