A special closing day for Simone Sabbioni (Italy), who won a backstroke gold medal at the European Short Course Swimming Championships in Copenhagen held on December 13-17. With his colleagues Luca Dotto (100 free style), and Marco Orsi (100 mixed), they allowed Italy to win 3^rd place on the medal chart.

Simone Sabbioni – 2014 European Junior Champion in backstroke swimming (50 m) and World Junior record holder (50m and 100m backstroke), 100m backstroke gold medallist in Nanjing, silver in 4 x 100m Freestyle Men’s Relay, Bronze in 50m backstroke – was awarded in 2014 the Piotr Nurowski Prize as Best European Young Athlete, at the EOC General Assembly in Baku.

The EOC award comes with a cash prize to help young athletes develop their skills and proceed toward higher goals. In Simone Sabbioni’s case that money has certainly played a role in bringing him to success at the age of 21…