BASILE Fabio

Belt grade
Black belt - I DAN (IJF, 15 Jul 2016)

Preferred techniques
Ippon-seoi-nage (IJF, 17 Jul 2016)

General
WEIGHT CHANGE
After winning gold in the -66kg category at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro he chose to move up to the -73kg category. "Once you are an Olympic champion what is next? It's hard. So I want to win an Olympic gold in a new weight. If my head says I can't do it, that is not a good mentality for me. If I believe I can do it, I put everything into it." He had previously moved from the -60kg category to -66kg in 2015. "I could have waited up until my time was right. But I'm not like that and I decided to go for it. I was criticised for my choice, but I have always thought that when people say bad things about you it means that you're doing just fine." (ijf.org, 25 Apr 2020; eurosport.it, 07 Oct 2019)

BOOK RELEASE
After initially planning to write an autobiography after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, he released his book 'L'impossibile non esiste' [The Impossible Does Not Exist] in June 2021. "In this book I tell everything that has happened to me since I was a child, why I have a character that has no equal, and above all I talk about how to be strong in times of difficulty - 80% of it is a motivational book. I chose to write this book so that people young and old can find inspiration in the motivation I had facing adversity. I thought about releasing it after the COVID-19 pandemic, but at this point a motivational book can definitely be good for a lot of people. It is also raw in some respects, it explains how the elite-level competitive life can sometimes be very difficult and complicated." (Instagram profile, 01 Jun 2021; gazzetta.it, 14 May 2021)

TV APPEARANCES
He has taken part in Italian reality TV shows 'Dancing with the Stars' in 2017, and 'Grande Fratello VIP' [Big Brother VIP] in 2019, for which he had to quit the Italian Army, who had vetoed him appearing on the show. He returned to training with the army in January 2021. (gazetta.it, 13 Jan 2021; rep.repubblica.it, 06 Mar 2020; ilfoglio.it, 21 Sep 2018; today.it, 12 Aug 2018)