RIMINI (ITALPRESS) – No regrets, especially because around the necks of the five very young Italians shines a silver medal which crowns them vice champions of Europe. The Italian national junior men’s artistic gymnastics team cedes the continental scepter to Great Britain for an almost imperceptible difference of just 28 cents. Tommaso Brugnami, Manuel Berettara, Diego Vazzola, Pietro Mazzola and Simone Speranza climbed onto the second step of the continental podium with a total of 240,230 after a great performance without having anything to complain about. In fact, the English players of equal age, who entered the game in the third and final division, snatched the victory in the last rotation of the floor exercise, finishing with 240,258 points. The Italians, however, keep behind a very strong France, bronze medal at 238,796, with whom they had directly compared in the second group of the match in the early afternoon. Another historic result for the youth section of the Gymnastics Federation: after the bronze in the general team competition in Glasgow 2018 and the gold in Munich 2022 – in which Brugnami and Vazzola were protagonists – the list of achievements is enriched with the first silver. This is the 38th medal in the FGI junior honor roll, the 14th place of honour.
“It’s sad but we’re still second in Europe – said captain Tommy on behalf of the group – just 28 hundredths behind the winners. So we are happy and satisfied with the work we have done. We gave it our all, it was a very high level race.” However, the satisfactions are not limited to the second European step in the team competition. In fact, Brugnami and Berettara – the two gymnasts competing in the full lap – qualified for the all-around final among the best 24 individualists. There will also be many final eight: Brugnami will compete for the titles in vault (the only Italian to perform the two jumps for qualification), rings and floor exercise, where we will also see Betterra involved. Manuel will also try his hand at the barre together with Vazzola. “All that was missing from the federal youth list was silver so we can say we have written a page of history – explained the manager of the junior team Nicola Costa – I am very happy and the boys must be too, even if they are very young and it is not easy to make them understand them that this is sport. It was a beautiful race, fought until the end and I have no regrets whatsoever: I hope no one does. We’ve been chasing the goal of reaching 240,000 points for four years and we did it. Of course, there could have been icing on the cake, but we are still talking about a European silver medal and I congratulate Great Britain who believed in it until the end. It’s a beautiful sports story, I believe that it can be a great lesson, especially among young people.”
A success to be shared between the technicians following the gymnasts at the Romagna fair Fabrizio Marcotullio, Corrado Corti and Pietro Matias Bani as well as obviously the coaches who follow them in their clubs. The specialty finals, scheduled for Saturday 27 April from 10.00, and the individual all-around final, scheduled for Sunday 28 April at the same time, will be broadcast live on Sportface TV with technical commentary by Andrea Massaro. Tomorrow, meanwhile, the first day of the final eight seniors will be staged live from 6.00 pm on Rai Sport.
– Fgi press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
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