Olympic Medalist Gabriele Detti Announces Retirement
Italian Olympic medalist Gabriele Detti announced his retirement from the sport on Wednesday, a decade after he won a pair of medals at the Rio Olympics.
Detti, 31, won bronze in the 400 free and 1,500 free at the Rio Olympics in 2016. He was at the forefront of a generation of Italian distance swimmers who have excelled on the global stage, born six days before Gregorio Paltrinieri.
Detti made the announcement on social media in a joint point with the Italian Swimming Federation. Detti’s last competition came earlier this summer at Italian nationals.
A native of Livorno, Detti qualified for three Olympics from 2012-21. He won gold in the 800 freestyle at the World Championships in 2017 to go with bronze in the 400 free, then earned bronze again two years later. Detti won the European Championship in the 400 free in 2016, one of eight European long-course medals and five in short-course competitions.
The 2017 win in the 800 free set the European record. He also retires in possession of the Italian record in the 400 free from the 2019 World Championships. He’s a member of the Italian long-course 800 free relay record team from that same Worlds, and he that year set the Italian record in the short-course 400 free that still stands.
Detti’s biggest achievements in the pool came in Rio. In the 400 free, he finished second behind Mack Horton and Sun Yang’s race for gold, Detti’s time of 3:43.49 a half-second better than a logjam led by Americans Conor Dwyer and Connor Jaeger for the last step on the podium.
In the 1,500 free, he was fifth after prelims but turned in a stellar final to finish third in 14:40.86, more than four seconds quicker than Jordan Wilimovsky for bronze. Paltrinieri won gold with Jaeger second.
