The silver medalist in the 100 meters at the 1982 European Championships and in the 4×100 at the World Championships: “Vittori wanted me like Pietro, but I got injured. Today, with my company, I destroy tumors.”

It was the summer of 1982, the summer of Italy. Two days earlier, Saronni had become world cycling champion at Goodwood. Less than two months earlier, Bearzot’s national team had triumphed at the World Cup at the Bernabeu. On Tuesday, September 7, at the European Athletics Championships in Athens, a 19-year-old Italian won silver in the 100 meters: it was Pierfrancesco Pavoni, and when he crossed the finish line leaning forward, he reminded everyone of Pietro Mennea two years earlier in Moscow. “I didn’t do it on purpose. But it was certainly a conditioned reflex.”

Can you think during the 100 meters?

“If you think, you slow down. You’re like a bull that has to move with the lightness of a butterfly. You have to feel what you’re doing; it’s something that comes from within.”

And to think that he had entered the final with the slowest time.

“In the heats, I ran 10”40 playing around, I was going like a missile. So in the semifinals, I took it easy, without thinking that someone weighing 70 kilos with the wind against them would stop. The others were twice my size. The usual idiot.“

What do you remember about the final?

”Everything, as if it were now. I had visualized the race, I wanted to get off to a fast start but without using up too much energy. I got into the blocks, perfect, in a bubble of absolute silence, Woronin to my left and Sharp to my right. Then I did something crazy, I started deliberately slowly, gradually picking up speed, the others pulled away but I caught up with them all, one by one.“

One more meter and you would have won.

”My father always said that too. I lost four hundredths of a second at the start.”

Then what happened?

“Vittori started wanting to move me up a category, he wanted me to be more powerful, he modeled me after Mennea, but I had different muscle fibers, for me it was a disaster. You ask me for 10, I, the way I am, do 12, but maybe 6 was the right amount. It was a disaster, I was killing myself.”

Why athletics?

“I was born near Villa Borghese, but my dad worked at EUR, so we moved to Ardeatina, near the walls. I went to school in Viale Manzoni. I played soccer, there were a couple of lanes on the gravel, under the wisteria, we had this race, I must have been 7, and I was already winning. Years later, I moved to boarding school in Paderno del Grappa with a friend. They asked me to run the 100 meters at the Youth Games. It was a gloomy afternoon, in the middle of nowhere. I was wearing sneakers, and it seemed like those 100 meters would never end. I ran a clean 12 seconds.”

And from there to Athens?

“I beat those older than me. Provincial, regional. I never trained, I just competed, but I was hooked. I went to the Italian championships in Bologna, I was two meters ahead of everyone at the start, but I had no stamina and the others caught up. I won by a hundredth of a second, but I won. The following year I ran 10“3, and at 18 I ran 10”1 and won bronze at the European Junior Championships.“

In Athens, he became a surprise like Paolo Rossi and Tardelli.

”I met them at an awards ceremony. Moser was there too. He bombarded me with questions about Mennea, why he had come back, what he might do. I told him he was improving and would come back strong.“

The following year, in 1983, you were together at the World Championships.

”In the semifinals, I made the usual mistakes, but this time I was the first to be eliminated. I ruined everything.”

But you won silver in the 4×100, behind the United States: Tilli, Simionato, you, and Mennea. An Italian record (38“37) that lasted 27 years.

”I pulled you along when I passed the baton to Pietro.”

You retired early, at 28. Was it because of injuries?

“The real reason is something else. I had given so much to the world of sport and so little to the world of work. I had fallen behind my friends who had studied, and after years of running with my legs, I thought it was time to run with my head.“

What did you do?

”I set up a company using the technology that had allowed me to continue running despite my injuries. Radiofrequency machines that act with very intense heat. I called my company Alba, because it is a new therapy based on hyperthermia. I have dedicated my second life to this. We use military technology in oncology, radar technology, sending RF signals into the body to increase the temperature of the tumor to over 41 degrees Celsius. This takes the fight against cancer to another dimension, and together with radio and chemo, it destroys it.“

You like difficult things.

”As a sprinter, I was convinced I could beat the black guys. We felt immortal, invincible. Not succeeding shaped my character: I was always hungry, I faced considerable mental burdens. My sons, Brando and Alessandro, work with me. They and Pilar are my life.“

Pilar Ottoz, still athletics.

”I’m older, we’ve been friends for years, we played, we laughed a lot. Then one day we became something else.“

Mennea had a kind of torment that led him to do what he did.

”We all have that demon. Some people express it and some don’t. Pietro was dedicated, he repeated the same things over and over again. I need to laugh.“

Why did Mennea come back after retiring?

”Because it’s beautiful. There’s nothing else in the world like the 100 meters; it’s a crazy sensory drug. You have a fire inside your chest, you gamble your life in 10 seconds.”