The Carpi sample had mononucleosis just a month ago. Yesterday he displaced his opponents
History
SENT TO TOKYO
The other side of the coin is called Gregorio Paltrinieri and while half the Olympics wonders when it is healthy to give up, he wins an impossible silver because he decides to go on. Against all logic.
To understand the weight of the medal in these swashbuckling 800 meters closed in 7’42 “11 behind the American Finke (7’41” 87), you have to look at it from afar. We are in Piombino, in mid-June and Paltrinieri discovered that he had mononucleosis two weeks earlier: he is not well, he is weak, he has waves of fever, he should swim but he can’t do it and his parents go to see him, as scheduled, and they hardly ever see him because he spends all his time in bed. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t speak, I had plaques in my throat. They saw me in the most total down and they never stopped telling me that I could do it. By dint of hearing it repeat, I thought “maybe they are right” ». The Paltrinieri family were optimistic without any reason, choice of life: the father manages a swimming pool in Carpi and like all the others it has been closed almost all the time in this last year and a half, they know what it means to insist. Paltrinieri did not swim well, did not distribute the energies, blew up his opponents and sent them out of bounds. It can’t even be called tactics: «I didn’t have the idea of being able to do what I was able to do until I tried. I decided to be more than the disease, to have something else ».
While the American gymnast Biles tells us that it is legitimate to stop and writes “I feel much more than the sum of my medals”, Paltrinieri takes the opposite path and does it without calculations because he has none available, without certainties because the energy that he has put together may well diminish in the middle of the race, but his doubts are also those of those who swim in the other lanes and here is the masterpiece. He shoots immediately and behind they expect him to die soon. Everyone knows that it was bad and above all they saw him enter the final “by a hair” and he certainly wasn’t bluffing. Yet it snaps, tears, stretches, in a swim that becomes increasingly unlikely and resists against all odds. In the last pool, with his soul between his teeth, he is overtaken by the American but resists Romanchuk, third, he only puts his heart into it: “The body might not hold me, but my inner strength is more defined than the muscles.” Those count, at the Games you can’t improvise but you can’t even give in to the slavery of control. Dressel, immediately after winning the 100 freestyle, confessed that he has not heard from his newly married wife for days, because he is too emotional, those phone calls would blow him away. Paltrinieri says he has instead read every message of encouragement and learned that the ways to get to the podium are endless. It depends on the desire you have to go up and on the work you did to get there, and not only the one you studied in the last few months counts: “I knew they were coming to get me, I held out.” And once touched he realized that Rio’s gold, always wonderful, still to be defended in the 1500 meters, was so studied that it didn’t fill, “I had anticipated it too much, it was as if I had to win it and when it happened it was the fulfillment of an obligation, a certain satisfaction, but not the joy that exploded inside me here. I was not the favorite and I was not expected and I enjoyed it ».
Paltrinieri listened to Biles’ words and tried to interpret Osaka’s, he too felt drained after the success, only he never stopped inventing motivations, exploring and rediscovering thrusts. The trip to Australia, the need to expand into open water, the change of coach, everything to shake off expectations, «I’m an ugly beast, they make fun of you. But we have the key ». Biles opened the door and left, he locked himself in the pool and barricaded himself there: “We all play sports because we like to do it.” Yes, but not everyone has the courage of Paltrinieri.
There is no predefined way, many protagonists of the Games have applauded the temper that is needed for refusal. It is not true that there are no limits, sport tries to constantly undermine them, but it cannot claim by slogan to impose the extraordinary as a goal. The companies can get out of the training diaries, as happened to Mennea, who noted every variation, every repetition and they can also arrive swimming crooked to the goal. –
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