“Trust me, it will be amazing. You cannot miss the European Athletics Championships in Rome, such a strong athletics team in Italy has never been seen.” Leonardo Fabbri invites all the fans at the Olympic Stadium for the upcoming Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships, scheduled 7 -12 June (tickets on sale here).
Fabbri won the silver medal in the shot put at the Budapest 2023 World Athletics Championships and the bronze medall at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow. Since a few days he is also the Italian record holder with a fantastic 22.95 in Savona, a performance that made him the second European shot putter of all times behind the German Ulf Timmermann (23.06 in 1988) and that allowed him to go beyond a legend of Italian athletics such as the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic champion Alessandro Andrei (22.91 in 1987), that was born in Florence like him and is a model for Fabbri.
“Overcoming Andrei for me is like a dream coming true. I started to compete in shot put when I was 12 years old” said Leonardo Fabbri, who will compete tomorrow at the Grifone Meeting in Asti to continue his preparation to Roma 2024. “Many people have always made comparisons between me and Andrei, with the performances he did as a child, with those he did as an adult, and I have always tried to match him. In many things I have succeeded, and I am proud of that because for me he is like a divinity. There is still one medal separating us, let’s see if in two months at the Olympics Games in Paris I can get close to him. I have thrown more than him but Alessandro Andrei will forever remain in the history of Italian sport for what he has done.”
In the last three competitions, between Modena, Savona and Lucca, Fabbri has exceeded the 22-metre mark nine times.
“I finally found continuity and lost several kilos, I no longer have the physical problems I had two years ago and now I can train every day. The technical gesture in the shot put is very stable and this allows me to throw regularly over 22 metres, even without being in my top condition: this is really important if you want to compete with the best athletes at international level.”
The Olympic Stadium awaits him for the qualification round at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships on the first evening session of competition scheduled on Friday 7 June and for the final on the following day, Saturday 8 June. “The first time I competed at the Olympic Stadium was at the 2019 Golden Gala meeting: I did really badly, but my international career started from there. I still laugh when I think about the athlete I was in 2019: I did 19 metres, I had little experience and I was very nervous. But it’s important to make mistakes: I’ve learnt a lot from that and I can’t wait to come back to Rome on 8 June to prove to myself that I’ve done a good work in these five years.”
The goal for Fabbri is to win the gold medal in the shot put, never won by any Italian thrower at the European Athletics Championships in the previous 25 editions since 1934. In indoor competitions, on the other hand, only three athletes have managed it in the past: his coach Paolo Dal Soglio in Stockholm in 1996, his training partner and Italian teammate Zane Weir in Istanbul in 2023 and Assunta Legnante in Birmingham in 2007.The gold medal is not the only hope for Leonardo: “The 11 centimetres that separate me from the European record is another goal. I already wanted to take the indoor record and unfortunately I missed it by 18 centimetres. Rome would be a wonderful opportunity to do so but I try never to think too much about it: I just go there, throw and have fun.”