Clemente Russo and Roberto Cammarelle are in the final, respectively, in the heavyweight and super heavyweight. Secured around the neck the silver medal, between today and tomorrow they aim to transform it into gold. Stefano Mangiacapre instead stopped at the bronze losing the semifinal. The times of the long fasting of Italian boxing which in two consecutive Olympics - Atlanta, Sydney, and in Athens only the bronze of Cammarelle himself - had not collected even a medal are now a distant bad memory. London 2012 will not achieve the exploit achieved in two Olympics, in Amsterdam in 1928 and in Rome in 1960, when the Azzurri conquered three golds (Carlo Orlandi, Pietro Toscani and Vittorio Tamagnini in the Dutch Games; in the Roman ones Nino Benvenuti, Francesco Musso and Franco De Piccoli), but the performances of our boxers, led by Francesco Damiani, are bringing blue boxing back to the center of the Olympic spotlight. Two golds would mean equalizing the result achieved in the Japanese expedition when Fernando Atzori in flyweight and Fernando Pinto in light heavyweight won the title in Tokyo, succeeding Cassius Clay on the highest podium who four years earlier had enchanted Rome and the whole world dancing in the ring .
However the finals go, Russo and Cammarelle are two characters who by right will enter the great and varied history of the Games. The Campanian from Marcianise is the only performer in the ring of the ExCel Arena in London who combines boxing with cinema, an actor consumed in Tatanka, the film directed in 2011 by Giuseppe Gagliardi, based on a story by Roberto Saviano, "Tatanka unleashed" . But Russo doesn't play with boxing gloves. And what "Tatanka" is worth between the ropes of a square, the Azeri Taymur Mammadov understood at his expense yesterday who, after dominating him to the point of making him bend his knees with a direct to the liver, suffered the vehement reaction in the third round of our boxer, able to turn in his favor a situation that seemed desperate being down by 3 points two thirds of the match. The Azeris tried to get back on track by filing a claim against the 15-13 verdict for the Italian but were pushed back. “Now I go hunting for gold, it's not enough for me to repeat Beijing's silver. And with the gold, who knows, another contract with the cinema will not arrive”, shouted Russo in the euphoria of the blue corner as soon as the meeting ended. Now waiting for him at 23.15 pm Italian time tonight, the Ukrainian Usik Oleksandr, certainly an uncomfortable customer, but after what Tatanka showed against Mammadov, anything can happen. Even if the bettors are wrong who give the Ukrainian the favourite, albeit not by much, for the title in a category, that of the heavyweights up to 91 kg, which in the past has seen at the top of the Olympic tournament giants of the ring like Joe Frazier (Tokyo 1964), George Foreman (Mexico City 1968) and Teofilo Stevenson (three consecutive gold medals in Monaco 1972, Montreal 1976 and Moscow 1980).
Cammarelle is less of a character than Russo but in the Olympic Games, in the super heavyweight category, from Athens to today he has been writing a story that could take him to the Olympus of boxers of all time: bronze in Athens, gold in Beijing, in London is a step away from a historic encore that would even bring him closer to Stevenson, the Cuban champion who disappeared, like Frazier, a few days ago. Cammarelle was once again stronger not only than his opponent, the Azeri Medzhidov, but also the hostility of the judges who had every appearance of wanting to favor his opponent, perhaps to please the powerful Azeri federation which had already lost one of his representatives beaten by another Italian, Russo. But the giant from Cinisello Balsamo has also torn apart the underground plans of geopolitics who in disciplines such as boxing - but not only - has always tried to interfere in the verdicts. Cammarelle will face the British Antony Joshua on Sunday afternoon, who beat the Kazakh Ivan Dychko in the semifinals and who will have all the home fans on his side in the ExCel bedlam. As if to say – and he knows it too – that Cammarelle will have to box 10 cum laude to turn the silver around his neck into gold.
The third Italian who reached the semifinals had to settle for bronze: Vincenzo Mangiacapre was defeated by the Cuban Roniel Iglesias Sotolongo, great favorite of the tournament for the super lightweight title. But the boxer from Marcianise doesn't make a fuss about it, happy to have shown off his bold boxing against a rival among the strongest and most authoritative of him, without ever keeping his guard up, aiming to dodge the blows and return. Damiani himself, who was furious with Valentino for the defeat in the quarterfinals the other night, is not at all dissatisfied with Mangiacapre's performance: “He just lacks a little experience. The one that Russo and Cammerelle certainly have in abundance. But the future belongs to him ”.
