Masters diving, podium and fun among friends: “We are one big family”

At the European championships in Roma 2022, the 1- and 3-metre springboard events for the men's 50-54 category is an affair among friends.
Italian diver Riccardo Giacometti was reborn after taking up the road of the masters championships, so much so that he is proud to show all the tattoos depicting the medals he won: "In 2012 I found myself slightly overweight and a friend of mine, Davide Lorenzini, invited me to participate in the masters competitions. From then on I lost 17 kilos and it was like a second life for me,” he said.

After he was part in the junior national diving teams, Giacometti is now a coach for the Bentegodi club in Verona. "During the Covid period, apart from the lockdown, I always participated in my boys' competitions as a coach and missed the international challenges with my colleagues. Now I am back here competing and earlier in training I already saw my podium mates again," he says. 

"The three of us have always competed in almost all European competitions from the 1- and 3-metre springboard," says Giacometti referring to his friends Olle Strombeck from Sweden and Erik Seibt from Germany.

"We are one big family, there is no real competition between us,” says Strombeck. “It is wonderful to be here, I really enjoy diving as a master. When I was younger, I felt a lot of pressure and now the only challenge is only with myself.”

Seibt's working life is far from the sport. He lives in Lund, in the south of Sweden, where he teaches English, Swedish and social sciences at school, but when he dives into the water, the feelings are incredible. “I stopped competing when I was 17. Six years ago I started again and saw that I was still able to dive. It was like being in a time machine and going back to when I was a boy. Participating in the masters is a great way to keep fit, to meet friends from all over Europe and to visit fantastic places like Rome,” he says.

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