«I’ve hurt myself so much for this sport and now I’m just not willing to do it anymore. The Italian Absolute Championships will be my last competition as an athlete.” George Minisinithe multi-medal-winning blue of artistic swimming, thus announces the end of his career. “I really wanted the Olympics, and I wanted them so much that I was willing to continue practicing an activity that no longer gave me any pleasure – underlined the athlete, excluded from the Paris Games starting in a few days – except that of knowing that perhaps, at the end of the tunnel, there would be five rings to give meaning to everything”.
“I found myself wondering what artistic swimming meant to me in the past seasons. And the answers I found are quite clear – continues the champion -. I have not been well in these last years. This is nothing new. And the reason for my discomfort lies almost entirely in this sport. I started swimming because doing it made me feel alive: it was fun. It became a mission when a good part of my world turned against this game, and without realizing it, season after season, the mission turned into an obsession. It’s been years since I felt satisfaction in doing this sport, but I couldn’t give up my obsession, not even at the cost of my own well-being: I preferred to feel bad about it rather than give up. But not anymore. I don’t want to trade my well-being for an obsession anymore.. I’ve hurt myself so much for this sport and now I’m simply not willing to do it anymore”. At the Italian championships, the last race for the Italian synchronized swimmer. “I will swim only in the singles. I will bring a new exercise, to a piece of music that I promised myself would be my last soundtrack. Even if I didn’t think I would use it so soon. It will be the opportunity to close the circle of these two decades, and to do it in a way that leaves me with a good memory of this journey that we have taken together”.