Achille Polonara recounts his battle and looks ahead
Just a few days after participating in the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic flame journey as a torchbearer, Achille Polonara has returned to talk about the battle against acute myeloid leukemia, which he is facing together with his family with the support of all sports and basketball fans in particular. During an interview given to ‘Verissimo’ on Channel 5, the basketball player from the Marche region spoke with an open heart, sending out a decidedly encouraging signal: “Today I am fine, the worst is over” he said, aware however that the path to normality is still long.
In the studio, Polonara was accompanied by his wife Erika and two children: “Thanks to my family I am living in a serene moment – explained the basketball player currently under contract with Dinamo Sassari, with whom he hopes to return to the parquet soon -. My wife has not left me alone even for a second and my children give me enormous strength. I have gone through very bad times, Erika has been extraordinary. Going back to play? Of course I would like to, but now I have to think about getting healthy: I live day by day, I hope that new year means new life, as the saying goes”.
Erika then went back to the very difficult moment a couple of months ago: “There’had been complications after the marrow transplant– she said.”
On October 16, they called me and I feared the worst, the doctors explained to me that Achilles had felt ill and ended up in a coma. He closed his eyes on Thursday and reopened them the following Tuesday, I never left him because I felt he had made me a promise and he kept it” she said. Also representing a kind of rebirth was the symbolic moment on Dec. 6, when Polonara carried the Olympic flame during the Milan-Cortina 2026 trip.
For the’former Virtus, it was another milestone in his recovery journey. “I was super agitated and nervous, but everything went well – he had said on the sidelines of his participation in the Olympic relay, where he received the flashlight from one of his fellow countrymen, high jump champion Gianmarco Tamberi (among other great basketball fans) -. It’s also a thrill to be standing, until a week ago I was still in a wheelchair, so it”.
Polonara’s presence as a torchbearer had taken on an even more special significance considering that only a few weeks earlier, in late November, he had made his first public appearance at the Nova Arena in Tortona during Italy-Iceland. A match for which coach Luca Banchi had also symbolically entrusted him with the captain’s stripes, as a gesture of closeness from the Italian national technical staff and the Federbasket.
