Born in 1996, Carlo ‘Bistecca’ Macchini was European vice champion on the horizontal bar in 2023; gold in the World Cup in Cairo in 2022 and in the Italian absolute championships in 2020 and ’21. The French Olympics are a bad memory: for him, cramps and falls on the horizontal bar and pommel horse.
Macchini, first obvious but ritual question: how are you?
“Right now sitting on the train to go to the surprise party for Igor Cassina, on the occasion of the gold medal won 20 years ago on this day (August 23, ed.): it would have been nice to celebrate mine too. I’m fine: the warmth and the embrace of so many people, even strangers, have given me a big hand. I’m still trying to process what happened by traveling, eating everything I couldn’t in recent years, riding my motorbike and playing beach volleyball”.
What do you think happened?
“That’s what I asked myself many times: the hardest thing to explain because every answer I gave myself didn’t make sense. I was in ‘top form’, calm and determined; results in hand, I had done impeccable preparation; I had even invented the details just to be up to par: I got there and I gave the worst performance ever”.
Beyond technical reading?
“I added the analysis done with my parents Francesco, Serenella and my brother Leonardo: the race and, in particular, the post-race period brought us together a lot and therefore, if only for this, it was worth it”.
Is there more?
“I thought that at a competitive level, I probably won’t get as much as I put in, but if, despite this, I manage to convey a positive message and be an example for some young people, I have to accept defeat.”
What did you pack in your suitcase to bring home from Paris?
“The hug with coach Marco Fortuna. I think he read my lips at the end of the exercise: I was bitter and desolate, but in two seconds I felt everything I needed in that moment. I repeat: maybe I’m not destined to enter the ‘wall of fame, but in people’s hearts. The Olympics are the dream of a lifetime: mine has become a nightmare. (he pauses and with his voice broken by emotion he starts again, ed.). Sometimes it’s life that decides how it should go; sometimes ‘it’ plays bad jokes, but I continue to love it”.
Gaia Capponi