27/02/2020   Giovanni De Benedictis' record broken after 35 years: the thought of the former athlete






 

 

 

 

We receive, with pleasure, this thought of Giovanni De Benedictis whose best Italian U18 performance (then the category was called Allievi) was "sent to the attic" after 35 years and 20 days.
 
We have published it with pleasure, in particular also for the final considerations that De Benedictis makes and which, also in our opinion, are "the main opponent of all sports battles".
 
 
 

 


 

 

 

The best Italian U18 performance on 5000 meters of indoor walking, made by Nicola Lomuscio last week in Ancona during the Italian Indoor Absolute Championships, with a mark of 20:54.38, allows me to make different considerations on the race walk; some of a particular and personal nature, and others more general.

 

First of all, I congratulate the young Apulian walker, registered for the Athletics Amateurs Acquaviva. Improving a “record” that I hardly imagined holding - 35 years have passed since my 20:57.92 - makes you think. Italian walking is capable of producing, cyclically, enfant prodige that with their results, often remarkable, stir up the collective sports imagination and launch the age-old refrain: "Do we have the new Olympic champion?".

 

When in the distant 1985 I established the best Italian U18 performance of the 5000meters indoor walk, in 20:57.92, I competed alone for 25 laps. It was February. About two months later, always alone, I covered the distance - this time outdoors - in 20:10.5. It was March 30th. Two weeks later, it was April 13th, I walked, always alone, the 10km on the track in 41:50.2, passing halfway through the race in 20:37.

I also remember having won, again in 1985 but in September (returning from the European Junior Championships, where I finished third) a 20km international road race from Salerno to Paestum. I defeated the French Jean-Claude Corre (24-year-old athlete; Olympic in Seoul in 1988) under a deadly sun. On that occasion, I even walked a few seconds above the hour and thirty. I was seventeen.

 

Coming to more general and less personal considerations, I repeat that Italy has always been able to produce walkers with a limpid and precocious talent. Many of them (too many perhaps ?), however, after 19 years slow down their growth, to the point of failing to live up to the expectations of those who saw them as sure champions.

 

What are the causes? Well, the topic is very complex. I have no cheap advice, but I know that to mature a talented walker, who is around 18 years old, it takes no less than four years. A time to be used perfectly, using science and consciousness. A time of assiduous, hard work and continuous construction on the technique, which will accompany the athlete throughout his career.

 

Talent alone is not enough, and the results of excellence are always the result of difficult but wise choices. The primary objective of an athlete cannot be mere economic feedback or, as often happens in Italy, obtaining the so-called "permanent job" within a military sports group. Woe to confuse the end with the means.

 

 

Giovanni De Benedictis

 
 
 
 

 
Mikhahil Schennikov (#451 - 1st in 42:00), Daniel Plaza (#374 - 2nd in 42:00) and Giovanni De Benedictis (#241 - 3rd in 42:56) at European U20 Championships in Cottbus 1985
 
 

 

 
The first laps of the race of the European U20 Championships in Cottbus 1985
(photo thanks to Stefan Malik - CZE)