Italian fencer Daniele Garozzo went two weeks without his gold medal after he said it was stolen while he slept on a train.
Garozzo, who beat American Alex Massialas for foil gold in Rio (and celebrated wildly), revealed last Thursday that he had lost the medal on Oct. 29. It was stolen from inside his backpack on a train ride to Turin, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
A Turin woman found the medal among garbage and Facebook messaged Garozzo shortly after the fencer’s public plea for help.
Garozzo was competing in Tokyo over the weekend, but the medal is in a friend’s possession in the meantime, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Even though I’d come to terms with losing the medal, it was like a part of me had been taken away,” Garozzo said, according to AFP.
Garozzo said he would repay the woman by inviting her to a World Cup competition in Turin, plus buying dinner for her and anybody she would like to join, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
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Top-ranked tennis player Carlos Alcaraz will miss the Australian Open that starts in nine days due to a right leg injury, according to his social media.
“When I was at my best in preseason, I picked up an injury through a chance, unnatural movement in training,” was posted on Alcaraz’s accounts. “This time it’s the semimembranosus muscle in my right leg. I’d worked so hard to get to my best level for Australia but unfortunately I won’t be able to play the Care A2+ Kooyong or the Australian Open. It’s tough, but I have to be optimistic, recover and look forward. See you in 2024 @australianopen.”
Alcaraz, a 19-year-old Spaniard, won the last major, September’s U.S. Open, becoming at 19 the youngest men’s Grand Slam champion since Rafael Nadal‘s first title at the 2005 French Open. He also became the first teenage man to be ranked No. 1 in the world since ATP rankings began in 1973.
Alcaraz last played on the ATP Tour on Nov. 4, retiring from a match due to an abdominal muscle tear. The next day, he said the estimation was that he needed six weeks to recover.
He returned for a Dec. 17 exhibition in Abu Dhabi and was to make his 2023 debut next week in an exhibition event in Melbourne, which hosts the Australian Open from Jan. 16-29.
Novak Djokovic, a record nine-time Australian Open champion, is the favorite going into Melbourne. Djokovic missed last year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open because he chose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Nadal, the defending Australian Open champion, is the men’s record holder with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic is at 21.
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NBC Sports and Peacock combine to air live coverage of the 2022-23 Alpine skiing season, including races on the World Cup.
Coverage began with the traditional season-opening giant slaloms in Soelden, Austria, this Saturday and Sunday, streaming live on Peacock.
The first of four stops in the U.S. — the most in 26 years — was Thanksgiving weekend with a women’s giant slalom and slalom in Killington, Vermont. The men’s tour visited Beaver Creek, Colorado the following week, with stops in Palisades Tahoe, California, and Aspen, Colorado after February’s worlds in Courchevel and Meribel, France.
NBC Sports platforms air all four U.S. stops in the Alpine World Cup season, plus four more World Cups in other ski and snowboard disciplines. All Alpine World Cups in Austria stream live on Peacock.
Mikaela Shiffrin, who last year won her fourth World Cup overall title, is the headliner. Shiffrin, who began the season with 74 career World Cup race victories, will try to close the gap on the only Alpine skiers with more: Lindsey Vonn (82) and Ingemar Stenmark (86). Shiffrin won an average of five times per season the last three years and was hopeful of racing more often this season.
On the men’s side, 25-year-old Swiss Marco Odermatt returns after becoming the youngest man to win the overall, the biggest annual prize in ski racing, since Marcel Hirscher won the second of his record eight in a row in 2013.
2022-23 Alpine Skiing World Cup Broadcast Schedule
Schedule will be added to as the season progresses. All NBC Sports TV coverage also streams live on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.
*Delayed broadcast.
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