Over 8500 athletes are in Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr this week. That’s because the 2025 FISU World University Games are on, and more than 100 countries are participating in 18 sports. But for one country, joy quickly turned into heartbreak. Yes, Italy’s gymnastics squad faced a blow unlike any other. They encountered an incident so rare and harrowing, it forced the team into making a drastic and emotional decision! What?
On Wednesday, Italian gymnast Lorenzo Bonicelli suffered a catastrophic injury during his still rings routine at the FISU World University Games. A botched dismount led to a severe neck injury that left him in critical condition. According to a statement, “Lorenzo (Bonicelli) is in a medically induced coma after surgery last night. It will take 10 or more days to know his condition.” Meanwhile, here’s how it affected his entire team.
When this accident took place on July 23rd, Bonicelli and his teammates were competing in the Men’s Artistic Gymnastics team final and qualification round. The Italian team had started strong, opening with the floor exercise and moving on to the pommel horse. But tragedy struck in the third rotation, the still rings, when Bonicelli’s routine ended in disaster. Thus, just shortly after Bonicelli was rushed to the hospital, his teammates, as declared in the official statement by the Italian Gymnastics Federation, took a massive step.
Bonicelli’s teammates withdrew. Yes, the entire Italian gymnastics team pulled out. It seemed that the emotional impact on the team was profound because, as Forbes reported on July 25, it was due to the emotional distress inflicted by their teammate’s injury that the entire Italian men’s team had decided to withdraw from the competition. In their official statement, the Italian gymnastics federation mentioned, “The technical staff accompanying the GAM mission to Germany, given the understandable emotional distress of the rest of the team, chose to withdraw the team from the competition.”
This story is developing…
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