They call him the caiman because he leaves nothing to his opponents. Gregorio Paltrinieri, 27, from Carpi, is the star of Italian swimming. At the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 she won gold, while in Tokyo 2020 a bronze and a silver. However, her greatest passion is not the swimming pool. “Greg”, as the high school friends he is still connected with, call him, is in love with basketball. Him enough to wake up during the night not to miss the NBA games. He knows everything about basketball: names of players, records and curiosities of the teams. Today he brings home another trophy: the highest step of the podium in the 1500sl at the World Cup in I swim in Budapest. But also a record: the European record.
Gregorio Paltrinieri launches Dominate the Water: open water swimming competitions for the protection of the sea
Gregorio Paltrinieri, the caiman
It has the world record of 1500 style in short course, but also the European one in 1500 in long course. He is nicknamed Greg and specializes in freestyle. Passionate about basketball and in love with the myth of Ian Thorpe, he is one of the brightest stars in Italian swimming. Paltrinieri was born in Carpi on 5 September 1994, he began to move his first strokes in the pool at the tender age of 3 months. Initially specialized in breaststroke, at the age of 12 he switched to freestyle, thanks to which he obtained his first successes at national level in 2011. The first important result arrives at the age of 17, when in the 1500 style he disputes at the 48th Sette Colli Trophy he stops the clock in 15’04’90, scoring the fourth best performance ever in Italy.
The turning point year
2017 is the turning point. Greg decides to also launch into bottom swimming, in need of new challenges and new adventures to find the motivation that the Olympic victory had taken away from him. He thus began training to become competitive on the 10km Olympic distance of cross-country swimming. At the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, Greg defends the world title in the 1500 style, thus definitively entering history, as one of the strongest swimmers ever in the distance: Kazan 2015, Rio 2016, Budapest 2017: the blue has completed the Grand Slam . Also in Budapest the blue swimming caiman wins the bronze in the 800sl, in the race won by the “different twin” Gabriele Detti.
Girlfriend
Paltrinieri is engaged to the multi-medal fencer Rossella Fiamingo. For the New Year 2021 you have chosen Naples, sitting on a table in the middle of the sea. On instagram has published photos of the magical night spent with his girlfriend and two friends.
