There is little to turn around, after the historic silver medal in the individual test at the Tokyo 2020 Games that he put on his neck last summer, Mauro Nespoli is one of the most anticipated stars of the Italian Indoor Shooting Championships. ‘arco, scheduled from Thursday 24 to Sunday 27 February in halls B5-D5 of RiminiFiera. “It is a rather intense second half of February from a competitive point of view – says the athlete born in Voghera on November 22, 1987 – since we have just returned from Slovenia, where at the Lasko Indoor European Championships we got on the third step of the podium in Olympic division team test, while in the individual competition I stopped in the knockout quarterfinals after scoring the best score in the ranking round “.
In view of the indoor championships in Rimini he explains: “For my part, the reasons are high, also because my last individual indoor competition was in Rimini in 2013, before a stop that lasted until the last edition., when, however, the tricolor appointment was placed in the preparation and approach path for the Japanese Olympics. Among other things, some wonderful memories bind me to the Romagna city and therefore I can’t wait to show up on the shooting line of the Fiera, which in itself is quite impressive due to its length in the pavilions “.
Joined in May 2008 in the Sporting Group of the Italian Air Force, Nespoli is an absolute world-class archer: winner of the London 2012 Olympic gold medal in teams and the silver medal in Beijing 2008, he was one of the architects of the triumph of the Italian national team at the World Cup held in October 2017 in Mexico City, bringing the Italian flag back to the top step after eighteen years. The month before, at the Stadio dei Marmi in Rome, he had worn the silver medal at the World Cup final in the “Mixed Team” with Vanessa Landi. Precisely in the mixed pairs competition he had imposed himself together with Natalia Valeeva in 2015, at the first European Games, held in Baku (Azerbaijan), granting an encore alongside Lucilla Boari in 2019 in Minsk (Belarus), where he also hit the ‘individual gold and team bronze despite adverse weather conditions, with rain and strong wind. Until the five-circle exploit in the Japanese capital, where he kept millions of Italians glued to the TV.
“Silver in Tokyo didn’t change my life, maybe that result made me a little more popular even outside our sport, but I’m still the same Nespoli as before., certainly with one more important laurel – underlines Mauro – A satisfaction that weighs in terms of experience, awareness and belief in one’s own means, looking at the next challenges. Yes, because I do not feel satisfied at all and in my personal viewfinder I put the Paris 2024 Games, the one that represents a strong stimulus for all the athletes in the national team. The coronavirus has destabilized everyone a bit, but now it seems that we can slowly return to normal and compete, even in teams. And in the environment I have seen several archers who have a great charge inside to qualify for the Olympics and try to make their mark ”.
