Alberto Cova

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alberto Cova
medal table

10,000 m

ItalyItaly Italy
Olympic games
gold 1984 Los Angeles 10,000 m
World championships
gold 1983 Helsinki 10,000 m
European championships
gold 1982 Athens 10,000 m
silver 1986 Stuttgart 10,000 m

Alberto Cova (born December 1, 1958 in Inverigo , Como province ) is a former Italian long-distance runner .

biography

After his success in youth (he started athletics at the age of 14), he joined Giorgio Rondelli's training group in Milan . This placed value on group training with large training volumes. Here he won the first of his 14 Italian championship titles in 1980.

Cova was known for his extremely fast final sprint . His opponents often only had a chance if they maintained a high pace from start to finish. Cova celebrated his first success at the European Championships in Athens in 1982 , where he over- sprinted the favored Werner Schildhauer from the GDR and won, to everyone's surprise. He admitted to journalists that his good final spurt could not only be due to his training, but also to his own blood doping (which was not yet banned at the time) .

At the first World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 , Cova was not considered a contender for victory, but a medal candidate. The 10,000 meter race in Helsinki was run slowly. 600 meters from the finish there were still 13 runners together. 30 meters from the finish, Cova was only in fifth place. But again he showed his dreaded final speed and relegated Schildhauer to second place.

The 10,000-meter race at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles was even slower than that in Helsinki. It seemed like no one had learned their lesson. Because the Finn Martti Vainio only accelerated from kilometer 7 , only Cova could follow him. Vainio couldn't keep up his fast pace and Cova easily overtook him on the final lap. Cova won his last international title.

At the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart , Cova fell victim to his own tactics. His compatriot Stefano Mei overtook him on the last lap of the 10,000 meter race. Cova never again won a major race. At the Olympic Games in Seoul , he was eliminated in advance. From 1994 he started a political career and was u. a. City council member for the conservative Polo delle Libertà of Olgiate Comasco .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://web.archive.org/web/www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/co/alberto-cova-1.html on . March 21, 2017
  2. http://www.toptraining.it/ auf. March 21, 2017
  3. Arnd Krüger : Many roads lead to Olympia. The changes in training systems for medium and long distance runners (1850–1997). In: N. Gissel (Hrsg.): Sporting performance in change . Czwalina, Hamburg 1998, pp. 41-56.
  4. http://www.cesil.com/dicembre00/italiano/10behait.htm ( Memento from September 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) . March 21, 2017