Skeet shooting: Pellielo towards the eighth Olympics

Mister Olimpia doesn’t miss a beat. At the World Championships in Baku held at the end of August he won the last Olympic card up for grabs. Giovanni Pellielo from Vercelli, 53 years old, the king of Italian trap, already has a flight booked for Paris 2024, an appointment that is worth the equaled record of participation in the Games in the history of Italian sport. At 8 there are the legendary brothers Raimondo and Piero D’Inzeo, they will soon be joined by Johnny, as they call him in the environment. And even if that card is not nominative but is assigned to the Nation, it seems unlikely and risky to imagine that coach Marco Conti could choose another shooter for the Olympic pit where Pellielo has built a career of triumphs as his palmares on an individual level shows: 4 Olympic medals (three silvers, one bronze), 5 European golds, 4 world golds and 7 World Cups. Today he is honorary president of the San Giovanni clay shooting club in Vercelli and technical shooting director of the Fiamme Azzurre (the Penitentiary Police). The next challenge is the European Championship taking place in Croatia where Johnny will shoot to win again (his final is scheduled for the 24th).

Pellielo, returning to Baku, is this qualification for the eighth Olympics a kind of revenge on the last period which saw you suffer wrongs and pain?

“No, the concept of revenge is not part of my way of thinking. The facts are different. I began my Olympic history in Barcelona 1992, four years after starting at the Vercelli shooting club of which today I am honorary president. Then I participated in 6 subsequent editions. My journey was interrupted in Tokyo due to a technical decision by the previous coach (Pera, not named ed.) who no longer considered me capable of shooting at a high level. I, on the other hand, knew that it wasn’t like that because I know my worth, being outside made me slow down also to be close to my mother Santina who wasn’t well. But I didn’t give up and, supported by what I consider my second family, President Rossi’s Fitav, I started again.”

In Baku he also struggled with a difficult emotional moment

“I said I would compete with a heavy heart. Two months ago my mother passed away. I skipped the training camp in Baku, arriving directly at the World Championships without having tried the competition field. Everything was difficult. But that strong pain proved to be an ally in the long run. Carlos Castaneda, one of my favorite authors, wrote that man becomes a warrior when he is not afraid of death and does not fear it when he met it. I recognized myself in those words.”

You can feel that his mother was special and decisive for his growth. A memory?

“We went ballroom dancing together until I was 17. In the dance hall I was a champion. Then on my 18th birthday, as a coming of age gift, he took me to the shooting range and put my first rifle in my hands, a Beretta 682 which I jealously guard. For that gift he paid a million lire in bills of 100 thousand a month. She was a worker, she had worked as a weeder in the Vercelli rice fields. She was an extra in the film “Riso amaro” alongside Silvana Mangano”.

Deep and religious skin. It is said that the meeting with Pope John Paul II ignited his mysticism. Is that so?

“My faith dates back to that event for the Sports Jubilee in the Vatican in 2000 in which I was able to speak with the Pontiff. I am a universal Catholic, the word of Christ guides me. I am open to any kind of knowledge. With trap, in the isolation of headphones, when everything is silent and you only perceive the heartbeat, I can get to know myself better.”

She is an example of longevity: 15 years passed between her third world championship (1998) and her fourth (2013). And she is still among the big names. What’s the secret?

“In the Olympic pit many of my rivals could be my children. Shooting is everything to me. I’ve been on the stage for 35 years and I don’t intend to stop. Now more than ever I want to keep going until I feel the fatigue of training.”

A few numbers to explain a year of work

“Fifty thousand cartridges fired, 40 thousand clay pigeons burned. All during 5-6 daily workouts. Few holidays. Because there’s always a race around the corner. Today I’m at the European Championships in Croatia.”

“I am a Juventus player, my reference champion was Roby Baggio. In 1997 Morini, a former Juventus defender, made me sign my first contract with the same Juventus sponsor. Now Allegri’s team must overcome the storm of the last two years with faith and patience. Then I like Tamberi, it’s nice that he quoted his father after the world gold medal: sport unites and doesn’t drive people apart”.

If we tell her Paris, how does she respond?

“It was my goal to qualify, I succeeded and going there isn’t just up to me. But I look further: after Paris there is Los Angeles 2028”.