The eyes of the world have been on Italy's sprinters over the past seven days. Firstly, Texas-born Lamont Marcell Jacobs won Italy's first ever gold medal in the 100 metres last Sunday, running a personal best of 9.80. Then the Italian 4x100 team won an unexpected gold medal yesterday, pipping the British team at the finish line. Jacobs ran the second leg for Italy in that race.
Few outside of Italy predicted Jacobs would win gold this Olympics.
Jacob is a converted long jumper whose instagram handle is @CrazyLongJumper. His previous best 100m time before 2021 was 10.03.
In the aftermath of the 100 metres win, an Italian named Giacomo Spazzini explained Jacobs' transformation. Spazzini is a bodybuilder, marketeer and the proprietor of Gs Loft, a 'counseling club for your psychophysical well-being' and he explained to the Libero Quotidiano publication this week that he had worked with Jacobs to get his 100 metres time below 10 seconds.
Here he is describing Jacobs's physical transformation, via Google Translate:
"We have increased his muscle mass by 4 kg and decreased fat mass by 4% in one year of working together. All through proper nutrition. He ate to stay in shape, but needed more for the leap in quality. We started a journey with the Hybrid method, which I personally founded. Thanks to the cycling of nutrients we have awakened its metabolism to drop below 10 seconds"
After Jacobs won gold last week, Spazzini's firm posted on instagram: "We had a goal and together we managed to make it a reality."
Spazinni also posted a video to his own instagram discussing Jacobs's transformation over the past year.
This morning, Matt Lawton of the Times published a story that claims that Spazzini is linked to an Italian police investigation called 'Operation Muscle Bound' that centres around the distribution of illegal performance enhancing drugs. The report makes it clear that Jacobs is not the 'unnamed individual' involved in the investigation, and Jacobs has never been accused of any wrongdoing.
According to Italian media, the investigation began in 2019 and has concluded. The results of the investigation are pending.
Jacobs explained his relationship with Spazzini to the Telegraph today:
"Well, this is something that honestly, I am not involved with, because from the very first moment we heard about this thing that happened, we stopped working with him. But we are not worried, in fact the person was involved in a situation which was not his fault."
Today, Jacobs agent Marcello Magnani confirmed to the Telegraph that his client stopped worked with Spazzini back in March, after learning about the investigation.
"I confirm you that Marcell stopped to work with Giacomo Spazzini in March, as soon as he has known about the investigation."
Despite the end of their collaboration, Spazinni's public comments and social media posts make it clear he is incredibly proud of what his former client has achieved this week.
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