Dario Verani, a 29-year-old from Cecina, the last world champion of the “marathon of the sea”, the 25 km cross-country race which was removed from the world championship program (because it was rarely practiced and too tiring at the same time) is also the new champion of Europe: the continents have retained the race in its schedule. He echoed the golden blue, in the corresponding women’s race, the blue Barbara Pozzobon, who won it. The Italian triumph on the podium on the “gypsy island”, on the Sava river, in Belgrade, where the European championships of aquatic disciplines are underway: Matteo Furlan he placed second among men.
Verani and Pozzobon also have in common, in addition to fresh gold, training together, coach Fabrizio Antonelli (who also coaches Paltrinieri and the German Leonie Beckwinner of the 10 and 5 kilometer races in the Serbian capital: another three golds therefore for the staff working at the Federal Center in Ostia, a situation similar to Cape Kennedy for the astronauts of every nation).
The two races in Belgrade, to tell the truth, were rather sparse: eight starters among the men (seven completed the course: the defending champion, the Italian Mario Sanzullo, retired in the water) and even fewer, six , among the women, four arriving after the withdrawal of the Italian Veronica Santoni and the French Delacroix.
European swimming championships in Belgrade, Italy hat-trick in the 25 km: gold for Verani, silver for Furlan. For women, first place goes to Pozzobon
The men’s race was animated by the French specialist Axel Reymond: Verano always kept him under fire and overtook him towards the end; in the women’s competition, however, Barbara Pozzobon soon took the lead and was never approached again.
Chronos talk about 5h08:50.9 for Verani and di 5h27:37.5 for Pozzobon; Furlan had a gap of 5.7 seconds from the winner, while Pozzobon trailed the second place finisher, the German Lea Boy, by over minutes.
These three Italian medals bring the Italian cross-country total to 3 gold, 3 silver and a bronze in the European Championships in Belgrade. There is still one medal left, tomorrow’s medal for the mixed relay. That Italy hits rock bottom is a phrase that here means the opposite of the common expression: Italy is at the top of the bottom.
Artists on the podium
Artistic swimming also gives a medal to the Italians in the aquatic disciplines: it is the silver one for the mixed duo which, in the tech specialty, sees the couple Filippo Pelati and Sarah Maria Rizea climb to second place with 217.1633 points, very close to the couple’s score the winner was the Spanish team formed by Daniel Gonzalez Boneu and Mireia Hernandez Luna who finished with 218.7658.
Another satisfaction for the twenty-year-old Spaniard who reported having been overwhelmed by homophobic attacks on social media with a video on TikTok in which he asked “are we in the 21st century or in the tenth century BC?”.
The fight for “gender equality” and anti-discrimination in artistic swimming has suffered another blow with the exclusion of the sport’s American pioneer, Bill May, from the American team for Paris. The admission of males had been presented as a great step towards inclusion, but then the rules for the team actually excluded champions such as the forty-year-old Bill and our Giorgio Minisini. True inclusion would have come from putting the mixed couple on the program, not the single man in the team who is thus barely a “disturbing element”. And in fact no nation carries it.
Third in Belgrade was the English pair with the winner of the solo, the Japanese naturalized British Ranujo Tomblin. Filippo Pelati, a rising star (he’s just 17 years old) has always done swimming, then he started practicing hip hop in his parish of Copparo; when he saw artistic swimming in the pool he thought of combining his two passions, dance and swimming, and he did it.
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