On July 28, the ex Inter coach Andrea Stramaccioni, an Italian football manager, saved two teenage girls from drowning in sea and was awarded a symbolic red lifeguard shirt by the Italian Coast Guard.
Stramaccioni says he is “not a hero or a freak” and says he just felt compelled to intervene. He was on vacation with his family in Puglia in the Bay of Sfinale when he suddenly noticed something on shore. He saw a lifeguard in the water, whistling to attract attention and seeking help.
“There were two girls waving and screaming, so I got up and quickly headed for the water. I immediately sensed the danger. The lifeguard would never have made it alone,” Stramaccioni told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
He noticed that the girls were in the area where the beach ends at two rocky points where the biggest waves gather. “I’m not a hero or a freak; on the contrary, at a certain point I had a tough time of it myself, but as someone with the physical and mental characteristics suited to a similar situation, I felt compelled to intervene.” And he jumped in. The lifeguard told him to head towards the older of the two girls (aged 17 and 19).
“As soon as I saw her, she told me she was scared. The water was deep, the waves were strong, I reiterated to her to stay calm, stay on her back, and that in five minutes it would all be over.”
He took her to safety near the shore and turned around to look for the lifeguard and the other girl. “She was in shock. The lifeguard couldn’t help her, so I immediately turned back. The younger girl’s situation was desperate: she kept disappearing, going down, and then coming back up, and above all, she had already drunk a lot. Meanwhile, the rescue boat had picked up the lifeguard and was trying to reach us, but we were too close to the rocks. They started throwing ropes at us from the rocks, but we couldn’t reach them. I started to get scared, especially because the girl was dragging me into the water. She was convinced she was going to die,” Stramaccioni told La Gazzetta.
Somehow he managed to tell her to listen to him and trust him. There was just one way out to safety from that point where she was stuck. “… which was to slip into a small cove between the rocks, so I grabbed her and literally ‘threw’ her there, ending up underwater. At that point, after resurfacing, I lost my bearings and fell against the rocks.”
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Only when he used the rope thrown by people and hauled himself back up, did he find out that the girl was indeed safe. “I breathed a sigh of relief … My son asked me, ‘Dad, what if I died?’ I did it out of a sense of ‘protection,’ as if my wife or one of them were in the water. That area, in any case, is dangerous. You mustn’t be careless or reckless … I didn’t think twice and dived in. I’m telling this because people should remember that the most important thing is life.”
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
