00:00At this point we turn the page and get to this evening's story, which is the story
00:06by Manuel Bortuzzo, a story that teaches us how willpower can transform
00:13even the hardest tragedies into new life opportunities. Manuel will soon be with us, a
00:21swimming champion who had a dream: to represent Italy at the Tokyo Olympics.
00:31It is the night between February 2nd and 3rd 2019. Manuel, not even twenty years old, is with the
00:38girlfriend in front of a cigarette vending machine, near a pub where shortly before
00:44A fight had broken out. We're in Rome, in the AXA neighborhood, between Leur and Ostia. Suddenly
00:53A black scooter with two people on it appears. Manuel doesn't even have time to understand what's happening.
00:59It happens that a bullet hits him. He remains in a coma for three days, his life is assaulted,
01:11but it will be a whole different life. A spinal cord injury leaves him paraplegic, taking away his
01:17the use of their legs. Meanwhile, they appear at the police station with their lawyers, Lorenzo Marinelli
01:26and Daniel Bazzano, aged 24 and 25. They have a drug conviction. They turned themselves in for wounding.
01:35Manuel and reconstruct how things went. After taking part in the brawl at the pub,
01:43Determined to take revenge on those who had started it, they got a gun and then, believing
01:50to recognize one of them as Bortuzzo, they had fired three shots from the scooter and one hit the target. An exchange
01:59in person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Now that boy has to learn to do
02:08having to come to terms with his new life in a wheelchair, he has to learn everything from scratch, start over.
02:15At the rehabilitation center he finds the swimming pool again, he who had been a young promise of the silent film
02:22Italian. But the first time is a shock. The one who until recently was her friend, now
02:29It seems he's not anymore. A professional swimmer who's afraid of falling into the water. The story of
02:38But Manuel doesn't stop there. In fact, it's from that moment that his rebirth begins.
02:46With extraordinary strength of mind and the support of his family, Manuel decides to
02:51face his new reality with courage and go through training with Olympic champions
02:58sharing water with the elderly and children, with a hose and a seat. However, finding
03:04The most important thing is his connection to water. Then his greatest hope is the injury.
03:10The hemedullary reconstruction is not complete. Perhaps one day Manuel will be able to walk again. In the meantime,
03:17he wrote a book, Rinascere, l'anno in cui ho ricomincia a vincere, which in 2022 becomes
03:24also a film for RAI.
03:30Those who decided to change his life forever that February night are
03:35sentenced in the first instance to 16 years, in the second to 14 and 8 months and finally the Supreme Court upholds
03:43the appeal regarding the lack of premeditation. The Rome Court of Appeal will review the case.
03:50this aspect and possibly to requalify the crime and redetermine the penalty.
04:01Meanwhile, Manuel Bortuzzo, athlete of the Fiamme Oro at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, has
04:10won a bronze medal in the 100-meter breaststroke, even setting a new Italian record.
04:30Good evening, Manuel, and congratulations, first of all, on what you've done. You're a great athlete,
04:38are you in the golden flames, are you preparing for other competitions?
04:43Absolutely yes, this year we have a World Championship planned which will be in Singapore towards the end
04:48September, so tough, important, an important goal, but after what we have seen
04:56In short, after a Paralympic Games you almost feel like you can do anything, so we're ready.
05:03That evening, how did he end up there again?
05:09But simply by chance, because in reality I was doing something completely different, we were at a party
05:14a very close friend's birthday for her eighteenth, so we were just
05:19in a house, in a villa secluded for our own business, only that it ended a bit early
05:26this birthday and it's an evening that we could have a little party, however distract ourselves, we have
05:30We decided that the party was over and we would go for a drink or maybe something else together.
05:34in a pub maybe, right? And just as we get down there, we see a lot of people getting off, even
05:39running, shouting at us, urging us, saying look, go away, because it exploded
05:45a laugh, a mess happened, go away, go away, and we took, we went
05:50away, obviously. If it weren't for the fact that on the other side of the street, I stopped together
05:55to my girlfriend, Martina del Tempo, to get a pack of cigarettes and then leave
06:00at that moment, just as I was buying cigarettes, a scooter coming from my
06:06right, he went around behind me, got on the sidewalk, and that's when it happened
06:11what happened, a fraction of a second in which these three shots were fired
06:15and where one took me.
06:16When you go back to that event in your mind and above all try to give yourself an explanation,
06:23What reading do you give?
06:25I really believe that the problem with people is that there isn't actually a real
06:32awareness of the gravity of what they do and what they say even simply
06:37or what they think they want to be. Sometimes take examples, take examples
06:43wrong, maybe you want to play the fake gangster, you think you live in a movie and you forget that
06:49reality is something else, that life is something else, it is one, it is sacred.
06:52No, there is a moment, I think, there was a moment in your life where there was a leap,
06:58no? You suddenly found yourself in a bed, in a hospital, someone told you
07:05that you couldn't move your legs anymore. The transition from awareness of what happened
07:14to start thinking about reacting. Can you tell us what thoughts crossed your mind?
07:22in those moments? In my case, I think the most important thing was to accept desperation.
07:29and feel so bad right away and have to deal with reality right away. I mean, I didn't want them to tell me
07:38bullshit, no, I'm perfect, I want to despair for what I am. I always say
07:45I don't cry anymore now, but I think because I cried the impossible during those weeks
07:50in hospitals those months. You look in the mirror, obviously you've changed, you're different, your
07:54your body changes and maybe you even have parts of your body that are different than before
07:59first and you can't even do anything to improve. Well, that's more than anything, that was
08:04the thing that made me suffer the most, the fact of saying that I am in a condition
08:07in which I am limited.
08:11What doors have opened within you and in your life?
08:15But a lot of doors have opened, you know, I've touched worlds, people, met
08:23people, experienced realities that have simply improved me as a man. They have scaled down
08:31my vision of life, the importance of the real things in life and so they gave me
08:37that humanity, that awareness and that extra sensitivity that is needed to live
08:42truly life at its best. What I truly consider most important have been
08:46those were the internal changes on a human level that made me
08:50and they make me happy to be the person I am.
08:54Can you give me an example?
08:56But I, you know, maybe talking in a clinic with a father who has daily contacts
09:01He's asking you how he can spend the last days of his life with his daughter, right?
09:06Now, when I bring this example back it puts everything into perspective a little bit and when you're really dealing with
09:12with the worst in the sense that you really say there is no solution, then everything else
09:19it becomes simple for you.
09:21So you're telling me that you've known pain, you know what your pain is and what yours is.
09:25than others, because then when you're in hospital you realize that maybe you were lucky.
09:32Exactly, exactly. The first step in my opinion is to respect him, to respect him, because so much
09:37Pain will always weigh more heavily on us in life than happiness, it's normal.
09:43It's there that you can then grasp those things, those tiny things that then make you
09:49a better person and when you talk to people this comes through and they realise it
09:54and first of all, perhaps even trivially, it is the non-superficiality that you have in dealing
09:58certain themes, it completes you 360 degrees, it gives you that extra something to be second
10:05me, complete note.
10:07Manuel, I thank you for accepting this invitation.
10:11Thank you.
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