It has a certain effect to feel Gregorio Paltrinieri, champion of all the middle distance and long-distance events possible, say: «I have to learn to manage the heats». First World Championship in 2011 and 13 years later, with 16 medals between pool and open water, he remains out of the 1500 meters final and knows exactly why: “It's time to convince myself that I can no longer manage.”
The autopsy of the failed battery arrives hot, a sign that the reasoning has been suspended there for some time. Paltrinieri he finishes in 15'55″19, “a time I can't swim.” Overtaken in the last twenty-five meters by the Turk Tuncelli who takes eighth place overall and keeps the blue out: «I had seen the other heat pulled, it was an indication but I didn't align with it».
«I'm disappointed and angry, I arrived at the pool tired, I couldn't have done who knows what, but not like that. I thought more about managing my energy than passing and the competition that exists at this level no longer allows me to do so. Maybe it's age, but it's not the only factor.”
He entered the 800 meter final from a side lane and came out with bronze and the awareness of the risk, but it is difficult to change the approach in progress. That question always remains about a program full of efforts to carry out at 29 years old, «there are four finals in the pool now, you have to experience them like this, only this way you risk not having any when it counts, but this way it's worse… not me I don't even play it.”
Traveling thoughts at least since last summer, when a Fukuoka Paltrinieri he even abandoned the World Cup. Then the stomach problems had debilitated and confused him, this time his body is fine, his condition, at this stage of the season, is not necessarily at his best, but he suffers more than he should. The champion, gold medalist in the 1500m at the Rio Olympics, is the first to ask himself questions about future programmes, but the only certainty is the Olympic calendar «there we start from the pool», which means distributing the effort differently, spend all that is needed for the lane races and then see how much is left for the 10 km, assuming that this is the plan and no other doubts arise, the possibility of cutting something «here I removed the 10 km so as not to exhaust myself, it wasn't enough.”
Even more important is understand how to calibrate the preparation after having taken into account certain limits, always to be considered in February, in the new World Championship, in the fact that not all the finalists in Doha will be finalists in Paris and that the best in the qualifications, the German Wellbrock (14'48″43) has missed the 800 meter final, but that verb “to learn” remains and the violent frustration for a result that does not belong to a swimmer used to getting on the podium. For Paltrinieri, being able to always try is an imperative, last July he returned home, now he has to watch his final, the one he scrambled with the exciting title of 2022, from the stands. Too much not to study a plan B.
#Paltrinieri #meters #final #learn
