Nicolo Martinenghi talked about his love for racing and the incredible feeling of winning an Olympic gold medal during a press conference following the 100 breast final.
“This is what I love to do, I love to race. I live for, enjoy that moment and winning a gold medal next to, in front of my family, my girlfriend, my friend, my teammate was incredible, probably the best feeling of my life,” Martinenghi said.
Martinenghi also reflected on how he first saw Great Britain’s Adam Peaty on TV before starting to race against him eight years ago when he was just 16-years-old.
“[Becoming] Olympic champion next to Adam is a dream come true.”
You can watch the full clip below.
Nicolo Martinenghi‘s Post-Race Interview
Finally an article about Nicolo’s win! Bothered me to see that the focus was on the slow winning time and then articles about Peaty and Fink. He beat everyone and swimswam comment experts almost seem to be angry at him for it
Slower than his WJR from 7+ years ago btw
let that sink in
Faster than anybody else, including the world record holder, on that given day. Let that sink in
Should not have been allowed to race the final after that extra dolphin kick off the start from the semis.
People are rightly critical of drug cheats, but this is also bending the rules and is not fair to the competitors.
Everyone cheats in breastroke, if you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.
If I can spot an obvious extra dolphin kick off the start then what are the judges looking at?!
Drug cheating is far beyond bending the rules though. Getting away with extra kicking is in my opinion more like getting an offside goal allowed in football.
Disagree, he made a conscious decision to cheat. I don’t think football teams enter a match with the aim to score offside goals and get away with it.
Fair point. They do however deliberately dive to try and earn penalties, I should have used that comparison instead. My point is it’s nowhere near doping in terms of severity.
It’s ridiculous that you get more downvotes that likes on this when it’s such a true point. A cheat is a cheat, whether you cheat by breaking the rules or by taking drugs. Martinenghi has not just cheated his way to a gold medal, but broken the Olympic values, which renders his victory kind of meaningless. He joins a list of the likes of Van de Burgh and Cody Miller who have cheated their way to an Olympic medal.