2015 had not started in the best of ways, but he was, nevertheless, the first Italian pistol competitor to qualify for the Rio Games with his fifth place in the World Cup. The 41 year old Neapolitan now has the opportunity to improve on the excellent fifth place at London 2012, the first Olympic Games of his career. In 2013, instead, he rose to the European throne, winning, in Croatia, a gold medal in the individual and team pistol challenge. A rapid success for one who only started practicing target shooting at the age of 25, after joining the army as a paratrooper. He has been deployed with the Italian contingent on a number of peacekeeping missions abroad and he is also set on raising the Italian flag in Brazil.