Nicola Bartolini won the gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, free body specialty. In Kytakyushu, Japan, the 25-year-old from Quartu Sant'Elena won by performing an exercise with very few flaws that earned him the remarkable score of 14,800. The last time an Italian athlete won a gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships was 24 years ago.

At that time, the protagonist was Jury Chechi who, at the 1997 World Championships in Lausanne, won the fifth world gold medal in the rings specialty. To find an Italian gold medal in the free body specialty, on the other hand, we need to go back more than a century. In fact, the first athlete to win a gold medal in the free body specialty at the World Championships was Giorgio Zampori, in 1913.

Bartolini, with his victory in the Rising Sun, is therefore the second Italian athlete in history to have triumphed in the specialty, with an exercise with minimal flaws, but overall clean lines, precise in the arrivals and with golden twists.