In St. Moritz feat for the 23-year-old Piedmontese who comes from athletics: second behind the British Weston
Amedeo Bagnis feat at the Skeleton World Championships in St. Moritz. The blue conquers the silver and it is the first individual world medal for Italy in a world championship of skeleton. On the natural basin of St. Moritz, the twenty-three-year-old Piedmontese – he is originally from Casale Monferrato but lives in Tricerro (Vc) – built a masterful test for all four scheduled heats, spread over two days.
The race
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Second halfway through the race, he chased away the fears and anxieties of the night with two final masterpiece descents, in which he showed maturity and great attention in riding, so much so that he achieved the third and second partial time, sufficient to confirm the silver medal. He closed at 1’79 from the unattainable British Matt Weston, author of the best time in all four heats. Bronze went to Korean Seunggi Jung, who came 2’46 behind the winner and ahead of the other Briton Craig Thompson by just a cent.
Who is Bagnis?
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Approaching skeleton only four years ago after dedicating himself to athletics (he ran the 400 metres), Bagnis immediately showed a feeling for the specialty, winning the Italian summer push title and the Italian title a few months later. “I started skeleton by chance – he explained -, I knew one of our technicians, Andrea Gallina, who is a friend of my athletic trainer Corrado Gennaro, I practiced light athletics but I immediately realized I had a good feeling with the sled and now I want to stay up front”.
Deployed on the continental circuit, he achieved his first international result at the 2022 Junior World Championships on the Innsbruck track, where he won the bronze medal. A member of the Cortina Bob Club, he took part in the 2022 Beijing Olympics last February, finishing eleventh. The world silver medal in St. Moritz joins the bronze medal obtained in the team competition by Mattia Gaspari and Valentina Margaglio in Altenberg in 2020. The unforgettable day of the blue team directed by Maurizio Oioli is completed by the seventh place of Mattia Gaspari . The Ampezzo player has returned to high levels after years lost due to a serious injury to his Achilles tendon, which seems to be definitely behind him.
The word
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Hugs and emotion among the Azzurri’s staff and athletes at the end of the match. “It was really difficult, because the result at the end of the two initial heats was unexpected, it was a situation I wasn’t used to. I managed to sleep on it anyway, at the right moment I gave everything I had in my body to stay up front” said Amedeo Bagnis. “Thanks to my friends and family who came to Switzerland to cheer together with my fiancée Lucia, as well as my bobsledding companions. Thanks to technical director Oioli and coaches Wilfried Schneider and Thomas Platzer who did an amazing job, all it went in the right direction. I hope to be the new name in skeleton, everything can be done if we work with the right determination. The push in the last heat made the difference, in the previous three it hadn’t gone very well even if it remains my piece strong, I looked at the video and realized what I could improve”.
January 27, 2023 (change January 27, 2023 | 1:31 pm)
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