Twelve hours, 28 minutes and 29 seconds, more than 100 kilometers swimming in the Po from Cremona to Bagnolo San Vito in the Province of Mantua. Mission accomplished for Walter D’Angelo, sixty-one years old from Milan but of Sicilian origin, master of the Canottieri Baldesio, lifeguard teacher and swimming instructor by profession in a swimming pool in the city. Swimming has always been an obsession and every time the bar is raised. Yesterday morning at 7:30 he dived for an enterprise that served to raise funds for «2NOVE9» L’Road Accident Victims Association and to raise awareness among young people about the risks they run on the roads. From dawn to dusk. More or less everything went well, also thanks to the advice of his staff coordinated by his coach Paul Morabito and to the assistance of Assopo ASDan association for the promotion of swimming in the Po, chaired by Alberto Lancetti and with the technical support of the Rescue Team Salvamento di Vigevano. “Compared to the last times I swam in the river, the water was much more cloudy,” he said upon arrival. “I couldn’t even see my hand. And then, probably because of the recent rains, there was a lot of debris, including tree trunks. I dodged two or three but I hit just as many. Luckily they were small and I didn’t get hurt…”. D’Angelo is no stranger to extreme swimming feats and in fact they call him “The Italian dolphin”. In the Po he had already set a record over 80 kilometers years ago, but his palmares includes the relay crossing of the English Channel, six crossings of the Strait of Messina, the distance record of 55 kilometers in the Naviglio, the silver in the 100 meters freestyle without a wetsuit and at minus five degrees, in the world championships of freezing water organized by the International Winter Swimming Association. Not bad. Even if a hundred kilometers in the Po remains a real “journey” that few are able to do, where the training done at the Idrsoscalo counts, the diet counts but above all the courage and the mind that must be able to resist stroke after stroke count. “I had some difficulty with the shoulder operated three years ago – says D’Angelo – but I managed to manage the pain and continue. The only real problem was seven hundred meters from the finish when I came across a shoal: I practically crawled for dozens of meters because you can’t swim in 40 centimeters of water. But I couldn’t stand up because I would have been disqualified … “. And after so much effort it would have really been a shame.