Ambra Sabatini and Luca Mazzone will be Italy’s flag bearers at the Paralympics

Pancalli: "They represent a great present and a great future, it was a shared choice"

ROME – The athletics sprinter Ambra Sabatini and the cyclist Luca Mazzone. They will be the two flag-bearers for Italy at the next edition of the Paralympic Games which will open in Paris on 28 August 2024.
The choice was communicated today by the president of the Italian Paralympic Committee, Luca Pancalli, after their designation by the CIP council on the proposal of Pancalli himself.

Sabatini was born in Livorno on 19 January 2002. At 17 she was the victim of a car accident due to which she lost her left leg, with subsequent amputation up to the knee. She later became world champion in the 100 meters in Dubai. Thanks to this result she was called up to the Paralympic Games in Tokyo where she triumphed in the 100 meters T63 category, setting the world record with 14”11, a record improved at the 2023 World Championships in Paris where she ran in 13”98.

Mazzone was born in Terlizzi, in the province of Bari, in 1971, and today he is considered one of the greatest Paralympic athletes in Italian history. In a wheelchair for a dive at the age of 19 Mazzone participated in several Paralympic Games as a swimmer (winning two silver medals at Sydeny 2000) and then dedicated himself to cycling with the handbike specialty. At the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Games he collected a total of three gold and three silver medals.

A total of 18 gold medals, plus three silver and three bronze, at the cycling world championships from 2013 to today. Sabatini and Mazzone will receive the flag that they will bring to Paris directly from the hands of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, on 13 June.

PANCALLI: “PRESENT AND FUTURE, SHARED CHOICE”

“The choice, unanimously shared by the Executive and the National Council, fell on two great athletes. The first, Ambra Sabatini, represents the present but also the future of this movement. She is a very young athlete who has already given us a extraordinary page of Paralympic sport with the gold in Tokyo and with that tricolor podium which has remained an iconic image of that Paralympics, her choice is also a sign of hope for many young people who, like her, perhaps became disabled but then found it their form of redemption through sport. You are an example that I hope can be contaminating.” Thus the president of the Paralympic Committee, Luca Pancalli.

“Sabatini – added Pancalli – will be accompanied by Luca Mazzone. A young athlete who projects herself into the future, therefore, accompanied by a great athlete who will experience his sixth Paralympics. Mazzone is a paracycling champion and an extraordinary witness of circularity of the Paralympic movement that unites the past with the future. Luca also wore the blue jersey with great pride for many Paralympics, winning three golds and three silvers in the five editions in which he participated. He represents an important piece of our history paralympic world”.