Italian Olympic champion Gregorio Paltrinieri will be changing things up this season, joining Mack Horton for 6 months of training in Australia. Paltrinieri, the Olympic 1500 free champ, and Australia’s Horton, the Olympic 400 free champ, should make great training partners as they’re 2 of the top distance freestylers in the world. He’s been considering making this trip to train with Horton since the two spent vacation time in Italy following the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Paltrinieri plans to spend 6 months training with Horton, but will fly back to Europe to take part in the 2017 European Short Course Swimming Championships. The meet will take place at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 13th-17th. He’ll then fly back to Melbourne, where he will likely spend the Christmas holidays, to resume training with Horton. During this 6 months, Paltrinieri hopes to find new challenges in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Paltrinieri is coming off a 2017 FINA World Championships in which he won the 1500 free title. He was also the bronze medalist in the 800 free. Horton, on the other hand, was the Worlds silver medalist in the 400 free and the bronze medalist in the 1500 free.
They can have long chats about beating Sun Yang. Maybe they will come up with some mind games to throw off the volatile Yang.
Horton got under Yang’s skin before the Rio Olympics, and he beat him to win the gold medal.
Mack, teach Paltrinieri how to use his legs on the last 100 and he will crush Yang’s 1500 drug fueled world record. Literally every time Paltrinieri is ahead of WR pace at the 1400 turn, but the two beat crossover and lack of heart stimulants just can’t match Yang’s :53 closing 100.
Awhh Dude . Italians own my all time best cheat . In the 87 Track Worlds in Rome they simply went out & measured their boy’s long jumpp & added a few centimetres for the win . For creativity & outright chutpah it never gets old .
I do honestly feel like Paltrinieri needs to learn a more traditonal form of freestyle for sprinting, see he can use he wierd strome for 1400m and then use a normal stroke to cloose the race. I’m not his coach though,