Gregorio Paltrinieri silver medal in 800 freestyle at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The blue closes the final in second place with an extraordinary performance in 7’42 ” 11 behind the American Robert Finke, gold in 7’41 ” 87, and ahead of the Ukrainian Mihaylo Romanchuk, bronze in 7’42”33. Paltrinieri, protagonist of a disappointing battery, gives a masterpiece race led from the beginning to the last meters. Only the sprint of Finke, who explodes in the final, denies the triumph to the blue.
“To say that I made a miracle is little, I was a completely different person compared to the drums. A friend of mine wrote to me that you can leave these finals satisfied if you swim with your heart and not with your head. I had too many ideas and too many confused thoughts, today I put my heart into it. The others will be able to prepare better for the race, with a better strategy, but the heart I put in is too much “, the 26-year-old from Carpi told Rai microphones.
Paltrinieri’s result is extraordinary if we consider that the swimmer, in preparing for the Games, had to deal with the stop due to mononucleosis. “In May I felt like a god, I didn’t think everything would be easy here but I was convinced that I was on the right path”, he says, rewinding the tape to the last European Championships. “Then I had to stop for a month, the dreams crumbled. But I held out: I started from scratch, I started training with the girls again and then slowly I got higher and higher”.
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