“What does it mean to have marked the new Italian record in the marathon? It means that no Italian in history has ever ran stronger than me, it is strange so. These are the things that every athlete dreams of reaching sooner or later in life. In what in the eyes of many it seems a simple combination of figures, I see years of unless work and sacrifice, years in which I have been tested with success and failure, the insecurities that have made me doubt. adequate for this sport, the accidents that showed me my fragility, the distance from my family, the daily physical and mental suffering. Iliass aouani So he told, on his social profile, more or less a year ago the Italian record on the 42km “signed” in Barcelona (2h07’16 “). Today record has not made it but in reality it went better. Much better. Bronze in the Marathon World Championships, a dream, telling what he didn’t even imagine he could tell would probably have said Franco Bragagna if he had been in the Tokyo station.
The story of this boy is all to tell. From Ponte Lambro, from the cold Milanese periphery to Tokyo’s world championship. Born in Fiquhe Ben Salah in Morocco 29 years ago, but arrived in Italy, in Milan, at the age of two with his parents he grows in Ponte Lambro and does not find a flat road in front of him. There he studies and begins to train and compete with the colors of Athletics Ricciardi. In 2015 he won a scholarship that led him to continue his studies in Texas, Lamar University, and to finish them four years later from Syracuse University where he graduated in Engineering. He returns to Italy and moves to Ferrara under the orders of Massimo Magnani to whom he owes a lot and does not forget it: “” I am grateful for those who believed in me, I am happy to raise the tricolor and to have made many people happy: my family, the coach Massimo Magnani and all the staff who follows me. This bronze comes from nothing, from public housing, and I hope that my story is of inspiration for everyone: when you believe it enough, dreams can be realized. My father is about to go to work on the pipeline and will be proud of me. In this medal there is everything: moments of disappointment in which I wanted to give up, tears poured into the car alone, but I did it “
It gives Italy the fourth medal of this edition of the championships, even if the most precious metal continues. SortI takes a wonderful bronze at the end of a tactical race with a time of 2h09: 53. It is the crowning of a fantastic season for the European champion who triumphed in April in the first edition of the European Race European Championships in Lovanio, Belgium. The Tanzanian Alphonce Simbu wins to the photoFinish with a breathtaking sprint, in comeback on the German Amanal Petros who was at the top at the entrance to the stadium, a nothing, even less than in the final of the 100.
In the history of the World Cup that of Aouani It is the fifth blue medal in the marathon Male after a silver (Vincenzo Modica 1999) and three other bronzes (Gelindo Bordin 1987, Stefano Baldini 2001 and 2003). But it was not, as it is never in a marathon, a walk. “On the fifteenth kilometer, rumors of my dark part that wants to give me to give me to make me silent immediately- he tells me-. Around the middle of the race, at a sponge, I lost one of the two contact lenses but I said I could be enough. I entered the stadium and it was beautiful, I pointed to gold, but the other better states of me. Last year I experienced the disappointment of not having been summoned for the Olympics, the last two months have been very complicated … “But in the end the accounts return.