High jumper Gianmarco Tamberi served as a flag bearer for Italy during the July 26 opening ceremony.

While sailing down the River Seine July 26 for the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, one of the athletes representing Italy lost a prized possession: his wedding ring.

However, high jumper and flag bearer Gianmarco Tamberi, 32, has managed to turn the unfortunate incident into a beautiful and poetic message about love that has gone viral.

In a joint Instagram post on July 27, he apologized to his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi, in Italian for losing his ring in the Seine.

“Too much water, too many kilos lost in the past few months, or maybe the uncontrollable enthusiasm of what we were doing,” he wrote, according to the NBC Olympics website. “Probably all three things, the fact remains that I felt (the ring) slip away, I saw it fly … I followed (it) with a glance until I saw (it) bouncing inside the boat.”

Putting a positive spin on the situation, he said that if he had to lose the ring, he “couldn’t imagine a better place.”

“It will stay forever in the riverbed of the city of love, flown away while I tried to carry the Italian tricolor as high as possible during the opening ceremony of the most important sport evening in the world. If I had to invent an apology, I would never have been this imaginative,” he continued.

“I think there might be a huge poetic side to yesterday’s misdeed, and if you want, we’ll throw yours into that river, too, so they’ll be together forever, and we’ll have one more excuse to, like you’ve always asked, renew our vows and get married anew.”

Tamberi added he hoped the situation is a “good omen” for more gold coming his way.

The three-time Olympian earned gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021, where he shared a high jump first-place medal with Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim.

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