Miami 10 February 2016 11:47
- This challenge, supported by Finmeccanica, is to raise public and institutional awareness around disability
- Training began last week in Florida
- The athletic training involved is 20-22 kilometres per day
- The ocean crossing is scheduled for mid-September
- Swimming non-stop for 72 hours, replenished only by mineral salts
Salvatore Cimmino is fifty-one years old and has lived with only one leg since the age of fifteen as a result of an osteosarcoma. Salvatore, who is from Torre Annunziata in Italy, has worked for Finmeccanica since 1988, and has recently begun training for a very important challenge: to swim across the 166-kilometre stretch of sea, which separates Havana (Cuba) from Key West (Florida, United States), without his prosthesis.
Athletic training and acclimatisation began last week and will last seven months. The training program involves swimming 20-22 kilometres per day in two sessions, morning and afternoon. The challenge is scheduled to take place in mid-September and Salvatore will swim in the ocean for approximately 72 hours, replenished only by mineral salts.
"Everyone can do anything" is Salvatore’s message, which is also conveyed by Finmeccanica through its direct commitment to the encouragement of overcoming physical and social barriers, allowing all Group employees to fully integrate into its production activities.
Crossing the sea between Cuba and Florida is not Salvatore's first challenge; he began swimming on medical advice aged forty, he had never been in the water before, and after only eight months he accomplished his first crossing: swimming the 22 kilometres that separate Capri and Sorrento without the aid of high-performance prostheses. In 2007, Salvatore organised the swimming Tour of Italy, ten legs, each 15 kilometres long, circumnavigating Italy from Genoa to Trieste, to raise awareness of disability. In 2009 he broke the all-time Italian record whilst crossing the English Channel in the Swimming Tour of Europe. In 2010, Salvatore established Swimming the seas of the globe - For a world without barriers and without frontiers, a new challenge to conquer the seas of the whole planet, the project that led him to take on increasingly difficult challenges, swimming in icy or shark infested waters.