Judging by his athletic intensity, his unchained exuberance and his ‘train hard, party hard’ approach to competing, Gianmarco Tamberi isn’t a man for half measures. And yet his signature look when high jumping is a half-bearded, half-shaved face.
Apparently, there is a method to the Italian showman’s madness. His track-and-field appearance — GQ Magazine once ran an item about his unconventional grooming habits titled “Don’t do this” — isn’t merely superstition. It’s a ritual that helps him enter ‘the zone’.
“In competition, the only thing that is a must for me is to have fun and make the viewer have fun,” he once said in an interview, explaining his facial-hair style. “When I have fun, I relax. That’s why I started with this half beard, half shave. And that became in time a big superstition. It also becomes a moment for me, in the mirror, when I shave, I think about the competition, I think about what I have to do. It becomes a big moment for me before the competition.”
