If you venture too far out of your depth it helps to have an Olympic bronze medal swimmer nearby.
Italian Filippo Magnini rescued a tourist who was drowning off a Sardinian beach on Sunday.
The former world champion plunged in after friends of the man shouted to sunbathers on Cala Sinzias beach, just east of Cagliari.
Magnini kept the man’s head above water until lifeguards arrived with a raft, Italian media reported.
“I just did what I had to,” the retired sportsman said later.
The rescue was witnessed by Marco Bencivenga, chief editor of the Cremona local paper La Provincia, who reported it on his Facebook page.
Reports say the tourist got into trouble as he was swimming to retrieve an inflatable swan that was being blown out to sea.
His friends’ cries for help were heard by lifeguards, who raced to set off in their rescue raft.
But 37-year-old Magnini, 1.88m (6ft 2in) tall, was closer and quickly reached the struggling man.
“The bather was in a lot of trouble: he was quite frightened, he was really stuck and had swallowed some seawater,” Magnini said, quoted by Italy’s Corriere Dello Sport.
“When I reached him he wasn’t even able to speak, and it wasn’t easy to lift him on to the raft, so we laid him on an airbed that some other bathers had nearby.” No details were given about the man who nearly drowned.
Magnini was on the beach with his girlfriend Giorgia Palmas, a well-known Italian TV celebrity and model.
Magnini was in Italy’s 4x200m freestyle relay team which won bronze in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
He was also world champion in the 100m freestyle in 2005 and retained that title in 2007 when he tied with Canadian Brent Hayden for gold.
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Source – BBC
