Paolo Conte in the ideal relay of Filippo Tortu. The Italian sprinter, 4×100 Olympic champion with that extraordinary sprint that we all still have before our eyes, he fielded his dream quartet in a report that appeared in the weekly «SportWeek».
The singer-songwriter from Asti would appear as the second runner, to pick up the baton from the Maneskin, and then pass it on to the Minister for Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani, to close with Giorgio Chiellini (Tortu is a great Juventus fan).
«As in the real relay – he explained -, the second fractionist touches the longest path as happened with Jacobs. And in this relay race of mine, since he is my father Salvino’s favorite singer, Conte is the one who has covered the stretch most of all with me, so far ».
Musical passion that the father passed on to his son as the love for athletics. During the pandemic in which he had been infected himself, Tortu had expressed the desire, once recovered and with the reopening of the theaters, to go to a concert of the Maestro.
And he has been speaking because on 29 August had attended Paolo Conte’s performance in Mantua, at Palazzo Te e backstage, accompanied by his family, he had given him an autographed blue shirt.
«After meeting him – he said – I can say that I respect him even more as a person and as an artist. Now I’ll explain why he managed to create certain masterpieces. The meeting was spontaneous and I was more excited than him. It is said that one should never meet one’s idols to maintain a perfect image of them. Well, it went very well for me. ”
Tortu revealed that his favorite song is «Sparring partner», of which he particularly appreciates the final verses, «Old elephant track / stretched over the macadam», which acts as a soundtrack «to the relationship between my dad and me both for our relationship on the track and for my athletic path».