From our special correspondent in Tokyo,

This is the other exploit of the day in the Tokyo basin, after the superb gold medal of our Frenchmen Hugo Boucheron and Mathieu Androdias.

The Italian coxless four managed to nab the bronze medal at the end of the program despite a stroke of fate which could have been fatal upon waking up.

Bruno Rosetti, one of the crew members of this quartet who had been in operation since Rio, learned at breakfast that he had tested positive the day before for Covid-19 and that he could not participate in the final of the day!

A positive control on the morning of the race

“This morning we had lunch with Bruno, and a few seconds later, he received a call from the doctor to tell him that he had tested positive the day before,” explained Matteo Castaldo afterwards. Fortunately, his three teammates, retested immediately after the bad news, were allowed at the last moment to participate in the race thanks to the negative results. "The positive rower was immediately isolated and all precautions were taken around the Italian team," said the international rowing federation.

It is therefore Marco Di Costanzo, replacing on the sidelines of collective training for two months, who had to make the fourth thief in disaster. “What happened this morning is very difficult, but there was nothing we could do about it. In these cases, you have to go and push, push, push on the oars and hope that everything will go well ”. To everyone's surprise, things are going rather well, with an Italian boat launched like a ball in the last 30 meters before another obstacle imagined by fate. The British boat, Olympic champion, deviated from its line, and its oars came up against that of Italy:

“It clearly put us at a disadvantage at the time because we were going up meter by meter, we could hardly manage to steer the boat to the end of the race, regretted Giusipe Vicino.

Without that, we could have played for gold, but in view of what happened, it's a very good medal for us ”.

Unexpected, even.

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