Water Polo, Legend Tempesti Retires: "It Was a Beautiful Journey"

Prato, May 20, 2025 – “It would have been easy to let ourselves go, to close the championship with this wonderful party, but we are Ortigia and we always play to win. Now we will go to “game 3”, we will honor our commitment until the end”. Not even now that he has announced the training camp and he has already been honoured by the club, his teammates and the federation, Stefano Tempesti he manages to let himself go: the goalkeeper of Prato which was celebrated last Friday in front of its fans during the last home game of theOrtigia, is focused on the match against Vis Roma. And from this alone we understand why in his career he has won fourteen league titles, thirteen Italian Cups and five Champions Leagues (to limit ourselves to the main club successes) in addition to the 2011 World Cup. Even if it is a "romantic" coincidence, in describing the beginning and end of his professional career that began thirty-three years ago with the florentia.

“It was a wonderful feeling, sometimes life gives you these joys – he recalled – I made my debut many years ago against Ortigia in the championship and I am closing my career with Ortigia”.

In between, he was called up for five editions of the Olympic Games, from Sydney 2000 to Rio 2016 (closing in the latter case with a bronze, after the silver in 2012 in London) making over three hundred appearances for the national team. After winning everything with Pro Recco, Tempesti arrived in Sicily in 2019, to defend the goal of Ortigia. And in these six years he managed to give a fundamental contribution to the growth of the Sicilian club. But he has not forgotten his city and the beginnings of the future, as a boy.

And on the day of his farewells in front of his fans, before taking his final leave from competition in the next few hours, he thought back to “race 2” (won against Vis Nova) and paid homage to the coaches who trained him when he was very young. “There were so many dear people in the stands, I’m only sorry that Umberto Panerai couldn’t be there, he was my teacher in the water – concluded Tempesti – the one who taught me to save and passed on to me a philosophy, a way of approaching the role that no one else in the world could teach me: he will always be an important part of my career. In the stands there was Jacopo Bologna, who had the courage to take me, a boy, from Prato to Florence, against everything and everyone. Believing in myself even when things weren't going well."