Enrico Fabris' Winter Games are not over yet, but the 24-year-old speed skater is already being hailed as Italy's hero of the Turin Winter Olympics.
"Fabris, the Man of the Games" read Wednesday's front-page headline of sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport,
following his triumph in the 1,500m event. It was his third medal of the Games and his second gold - Fabris also led the Azzurri to the top of the podium in the team pursuit and took bronze in the 5,000m.
The speed skater was congratulated by Premier Silvio Berlusconi and President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, as well as by fans, family, friends and fellow athletes. The three-medal haul makes Fabris the Azzurri man to have won most at a single edition of the Winter Games - only an Italian woman, cross-country skier Manuela Di Centa, has done better, with two golds, two silvers and a bronze at Lillehammer 1994.
Bobsleigh men Eugenio Monti and Luciano de Paolis won two golds at Grenoble 1968, as did Alpine skier Alberto Tomba at Calgary 1988, but they did not have a third medal to go with them.
Cross-country skier Giorgio Vanzetta won three medals at Albertville 1992, but they were two bronzes and a silver.
"It's a great source of satisfaction to be considered an equal to the greats of the past," Fabris said. "But records are made to be broken and maybe after me a faster skater will come along." The Padua University student now has the opportunity to return to the podium in the 10,000km.
"It's not my best event, but that does not mean I won't be able to give some more excitement to the public of these Olympics," he said. Fabris' success has come as something of a surprise as Italy had never won a long-track speed skating medal before Turin and the sport has a much smaller following here than in countries like Norway, the Netherlands and the USA.
The skater said he was inspired by Italy's hero at the last Summer Olympics in Athens in 2004, marathon gold medallist Stefano Baldini."The biggest emotion I have experienced at the few Olympics I've seen was when Baldini won in Athens," he said. "He's a simple athlete like me and he has the same goal." Fabris' victory was a tactical masterpiece. He started relatively slowly and at the 700-metre mark registered a time of 51.1 seconds, over 1.5 seconds slower than Shani Davis of the USA, the eventual silver medallist -
a huge amount in this sport.
But he then gradually turned up the pace and registered a blistering final lap to win by 16 hundredths of a second. His heroics helped take the Azzurri medal tally up to nine (fours golds and five bronzes), putting them fifth in the medal table.
Fabris has made up for the Italian Alpine skiing team's lack of success so far.
Turin is Fabris' second Olympic adventure. He came 16th in the 5,000m and 26th in the 1,500m at Salt Lake City four years ago. The guitar-playing rock lover from Roana, in the northern Italian province of Vicenza, started skating at the age of six and came to speed skating via short track.
He debuted with the Italian national team in 2001.
Before Turin, his best results were two third places at the 2004 World Championships in the 5,000m and the 10,000m and a gold medal at the European Championships earlier this year.
The three Turin medals have earned Fabris 300,000 euros in prize money from the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI). "After I won the gold last week I said I'd like to go on holiday in Norway or America," he quipped. "Now I can afford to do both."
