Tom Daley and his Pride “shammy” towel. Australian rugby sevens skipper Sharni Smale and her rainbow headgear. Dutch ‘keeper Anne Veenendaal with a Progress flag sticker on her hockey helmet.
These are three Olympic athletes that we know of who have displayed the flag colors of their LGBTQ community while competing at Paris 2024 — but there has been a moment of Pride on the podium too.
On Sunday, the Italy team was runners-up in the fencing men’s team foil competition. It was the final event in the sport’s schedule at the Grand Palais.
Stepping up to collect their medals were Filippo Macchi (who won individual silver earlier in the week), Guillaume Bianchi, Alessio Foconi, and Tommaso Marini.
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Highly visible on Marini’s wrist as he stood with Macchi, Bianchi and Foconi, arms raised in celebration, was a sweatband in Pride rainbow colors.
Marini is the reigning individual world and European champion but he had surprisingly lost in the round of 16 in Paris. For the 24-year-old, competing at his first Olympics, taking home team silver was a positive conclusion to his Games experience.
At the end of his Instagram post after the ceremony, Marini included a rainbow emoji too. He wrote: “Thank you for being some special guys, I’ve been blessed to find teammates like these.
“We shared this amazing journey together and it was beautiful… Who finds a friend finds a treasure?
“And we’ve found four splendid silver medals… I really love you guys so much.”
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A quick glance at other pics on Marini’s account shows a passion for fashion — his father Stefano is an entrepreneur, and his mother Anna a former model.
In his photos, he is sometimes shirtless, occasionally has his nails painted, often wears jewelry and at 6ft 3in, always appears very confident in his own skin (“in sport, being beautiful helps,” he told Corriere della Sera last year).
In an interview with NSS magazine, Marini lists art, music, theater and cinema as his primary interests away from sport.
A recent profile in Gazzetta della Sport mentioned that one of his four tattoos is a lyric from LGBTQ anthem “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, who is said to be his “idol”. At some point, his cellphone case was also in rainbow colors.
Outsports has reached out to Marini to ask if there’s a message behind his Pride sweatband on the podium.
He hails from the city of Ancona on Italy’s east coast, and took up fencing as a boy after deciding that competitive swimming wasn’t for him.
It was a solid choice. By some distance, fencing is the Summer Olympics sport that his country has been most successful in.
Marini was making good progress but that was interrupted when international sport shut down in 2020. He was a reserve on Olympic team for Tokyo the following year.
He was considering giving up but persisted and in April 2022, he traveled to Belgrade and claimed his first individual World Cup title. A few months later, he won team gold and individual silver at the World Fencing Championships in Cairo.
Marini then became individual world champion on home soil in Milan in July 2023. A week later, he underwent shoulder surgery which kept him out of action until December.
During his time off, he helped to promote “Social Thrusts,” an inclusion initiative in Italian fencing, even getting the opportunity to address the lower house of the Italian Parliament on its importance.
Earlier this year, he was included in Forbes Italia’s list of the 100 most notable Italians under the age of 30. In June, he looked back to his best as he picked up his first European Championships title, in Basel.
As for now, Marini is back home in Acona after his Olympics adventure. He told local newspaper Il Resto del Carlino that he plans to go to Sardinia and then Greece for a holiday.
But he is already looking towards another Summer Games. “I will arrive at the next one more ready and aware,” he said.
We’re definitely more aware of his talent, and will be following his journey towards Los Angeles 2028.
