After the accident he completed the Klagenfurt Ironman

“When on Christmas Day, I was on the emergency room bed after being hit by a car while training on my bike, I thought I would never be able to cross this finish line”. These were the words of Cussino Davide Peschiaroli immediately after completing the Klagenfurt Ironman, less than six months after the bad accident that forced him to interrupt his preparation for his most important event of the season.

Weeks of physiotherapy and work in the gym, and then daily training in the water and on the roads, however, opened the doors of Carinthia wide open to him where, in front of an incredible audience, almost three thousand athletes from over seventy countries challenged each other for hours along the 3.8km of swimming, 180km of cycling and a marathon. The race, an iconic stage of the Ironman circuit, quickly turned into an epic battle due to the terrible weather conditions, with rain and hail keeping the protagonists and fans company for a good part of the day.

The Roman athlete, participating in the Cus Ferrara Triathlon since 2020, does not start well in the waters of Lake Wörthersee, but after a few hundred meters he forgets the pain in his shoulder, a hateful legacy of the accident, and by increasing his strokes he recovers a good part of the ground lost by completing the first swimming leg without any problems in an overall satisfactory time. Quick at T1 (swim-bike change), Peschiaroli breaks the delay on the ups and downs of the suggestive Austrian route made slimy and treacherous by frequent downpours and heavy hailstorms; with a fluid and regular pedaling, confident in the “legs” forged in the many training sessions, the yellow and black athlete finishes the 180km distance and the over 1800m difference in altitude in just over five and a half hours with a good supply of energy. The bike-run transition is also very fast and the 42,195 meters of the last stage flow quickly and without failure, punctuated by the click of the carbon soles on the wet asphalt and by the incessant encouragement of the large audience present. The scoreboard at the finish line will say 10h46’26”, a very respectable result for an athlete over 50 with only seven races behind him, the result of months of sacrifices and hard training and the extraordinary work of David Morelli, one of the best technicians in the world of triathlon.

The 44th time in the M3 category and the 602nd overall are numbers that will soon be forgotten, while the awareness that determination and passion allow you to overcome any obstacle and that the support of friends, coaches and teammates also heals wounds will remain indelible. caused by careless motorists.

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