European diving championships, Italy immediately won gold in the mixed team event

Four athletes and six dives into gold. Italy, in the first competition of the 38th European Water Sports Championships, immediately conquered the most precious metal: the gold medal in the mixed team diving event, the competition that rewards the consistency of a country. The ones to climb to the top of Europe were Chiara Pellacani, Matteo Santoro, Sarah Jodoin Di Maria and Raffaele Pelligra, the latter a 17-year-old making his debut with the senior national team.

Azzurri did very well in the three individual jumps: Pellacani in the triple somersault and a half forward piked from the springboard, Jodoin Di Maria in the vertical with double somersault back with a twist and a half from the platform, and Pelligra in the triple somersault and a half backwards grouped from the platform. Again from ten metres, a best partial also for Jodoin Di Maria-Pelligra with the double somersault and a half back with a twist and a half.

The performance and the score

Six dives, six brushstrokes in the blue water of the Olympic swimming pool in Paris, under the eyes of the diving legend Klaus Dibiasi, in the “photographer” version, filming every acrobatics of the Italian new generation.

At the end of the six dives, the Italian team assembled by technical commissioner Oscar Bertone scored 410.60 points. Italy ahead of two great powers: the Russian team, at a European level, unlike the indications of the world federation, still under the acronym of neutral athletes, Nab, with 385.80 points, and Ukraine with 368.20.

Bertone: “It’s fantastic to start like this”

“Starting like this is fantastic and is very important for the team and the whole environment. They are all very young boys and they need to gain experience – commented Bertone at the end of the awards ceremony -. We have a deliberately young team, with some older boys who help the younger ones to grow not only in the race, but during training. It is a very long, difficult European Championship, because we will have races that will end at 11pm”.

Bertone then commented on the performance of the individuals. “Chiara was the protagonist and she is the one who is by far the most exposed – explains the blue city -. At the moment I see her as the most serene of all. Matteo must grow, because the medals he has won up to now are non-Olympic medals and we want to see him in shape and above all on the Olympic trampolines, therefore three meters individual above all. Sarah was very good, because she has a wrist problem which is he’s been carrying for a long time and he gritted his teeth Raffaele was the winning bet, he was good at not making any mistakes”.

Tomorrow the medals will be awarded in the men’s one-metre springboard, with Lorenzo Marsaglia and Matteo Santoro, and those in the women’s platform synchro, with Matilde Marzetti and Irene Pesce.