If you thought that the Olympic athletes could only make you feel bad about yourself when it comes to your athletic abilities, think again — they can also beat you in the love and romance department. And during Friday’s opening ceremony, Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi did just that — when it comes to romantic things your partner could say or do, let’s just say he blew us all out of the water.
Gianmarco was one of the flagbearers for the boat parade that kicked off the 2024 Paris Olympics. And while doing his job (I guess a little too enthusiastically), his wedding ring slipped off and fell into the Seine. Yes, the same Seine that people were shitting into just a few months ago — but that’s not relevant here.
We would have never even known that he had lost has wedding ring, had he not taken to Instagram and devastated us all with the single most romantic caption anyone could ever write (and it’s written in Italian, so you know it’s even more romantic).
He posted a picture of him and his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi on their wedding day and thanks to Google Translate we know Gianmarco poured out his heart and soul to her as he describes the moment he felt the ring drop.
“I’m sorry my love, I’m terribly sorry,” he starts. “Too much water, too many kilos lost in the last few months or perhaps the uncontainable enthusiasm of what we were doing. Probably all three, the fact remains that I heard it slip away, I saw it fly…. I followed it with my eyes until I saw it bounce inside the boat. A tinkle of hope… But unfortunately the bounce was in the wrong direction and floating more than a thousand times in the air I saw it dive into the water as if that was the only place it wanted to be.”
He then goes on to write: “A few moments that lasted forever. But if it really had to happen, if I really had to lose this faith, I couldn’t imagine a better place. It will remain forever in the riverbed of the city of love, flown away while I was trying to carry the Italian tricolor as high as possible during the opening ceremony of the most important sporting event in the world. If I had to make up an excuse I would never have been able to be so imaginative.”
But he doesn’t even stop there. He basically tells her that she, too should throw her wedding ring into the Seine if she wants “so that they will be together forever and we will have one more excuse to, as you have always asked me, renew our promises and get married again.”
Leave it to the Italians to take a moment like losing your ring in a poop-filled river (okay I know it doesn’t actually have poop in it) and make it into an opportunity for romance and renewing wedding vows. Deep sigh.
