Magnificent Thomas Ceccon: triumphing in the 100 metres backstroke to secure Italia Team’s second gold

An extraordinary Thomas Ceccon lit up the third evening of the swimming finals at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

In the pool at the Defense Arena, the prodigy from Thiene triumphed in the 100 metres backstroke, delivering Italia Team their second gold medal of this Olympics.

The Azzurro (photo by Simone Ferraro/CONI), having recorded the second-fastest time in the semi-finals (52.58), improved to 52.00 in the final, finishing ahead of China’s Jiayu Xu (52.32) and the United States' Ryan Murphy (52.39).

This marks the seventh gold in the history of Italian swimming at the Games, the first in this speciality. Ceccon, having won three Olympic relay medals, achieved the satisfaction of his first individual podium (although he won four at Buenos Aires 2018 in the Youth Olympic Games), after narrowly missing out three years ago at the Tokyo edition.