Run The Bluegrass volunteer Lorenza Savini has Olympic Dreams

Lorenza Savini enjoyed the thoroughbred near the water station and even gave the horse a quick kiss during a race break. (Larry Vaught Photo)

Because of a severe hamstring injury, I was not able to do the Run The Bluegrass 10K (6.2 miles) Saturday that I was hoping to do because of the new course that started and ended at Talon Winery. I knew my days of doing the half-marathon (13.1 miles) were over,

I volunteered again to work packet pickup on Friday and for the first time volunteered to work the hydration station about 7.5 miles into the half marathon. I figured for over 30 years a lot of folks had handed me water during runs and it was my time to give back.

However, I had no idea I would enjoy my volunteer work so much Saturday. Sure, I like to talk a lot and this way I got to see, greet and hopefully help a lot of folks a little more than halfway on their run on this difficult hilly course. But what I never expected was to be working with a potential Olympian.

Lorenza Savini, 25, and her mother, Patti Savini, drove from Troy, Ohio to volunteer. Lorenza has raced in past Run The Bluegrass events but a leg injury prevented that. She wanted to still be involved in the run and talked her mother into also volunteering. The two actually found a spot near the hydration station and slept in their SUV Friday night to make sure they didn’t have to battle traffic to be on time Saturday.

Impressed? I was. However, that was just the start.

Lorenza is a former Division III cross country runner at Otterbein University with some impressive times. However, after finding out the family had horses and she had ridden from an early age, her mother finally told me she was an elite pentathlete who had a potential chance to have qualified for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris if she had not been injured.

The modern pentathlon is a combination of epee fencing duels, 200-meter freestyle swim, show jumping competition on a course with 12 obstacles on a horse selected in a blind draw, and a combination running/shooting event that has three rounds of shooting at five targets in a 70-second time frame and three 1,000-meter cross country runs.

She was a silver medalist at the 2021 USA Pentathlon Championships. She has competed in Ireland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Turkey along with events in Atlanta, San Antonio, New Mexico, Cleveland and Colorado Springs.

“I started competing in modern pentathlon when I was a sophomore in high school. I’ve always been a runner and a horseback rider. I trained my horse starting when I was eight years old and then when I got into my teens I worked with our thoroughbreds and helped get them on the track. Then when they retired, we retrained them for eventing horses,” Lorenza said.

“I’ve been a pentathlete for almost 10 years, but I got injured a year and a half ago. I’ve been mostly working on my fencing since then. Since I have been hurt, you just do what you can when you can.”

She said swimming is by far the hardest event for her.

“I am not a natural swimmer at all. My newest event was fencing and I didn’t have any experience in that but it has been fun. Once you find the confidence in it, then it is just go out there and have fun where in swimming, I’m just not that good at it. I have always struggled with distance swimming but 200 meters is supposed to be like the perfect sprint distance type of thing,” she said.

Her favorite event is easily the combined shooting/running competition.

Lorenza knew she had a realistic chance to make the 2024 Olympics before her injury. Now she’s not so sure what lies ahead, especially with her ready to start physical therapy graduate school.

“They will be changing the sport a little bit. They are taking out the riding and making an obstacle course you run. We’ll see if I can get back and get my foot good enough to be able to really compete,” she said. “I am going to train as much as I can even with school and we’ll see what happens.”

She’s never shied away from competing. Her best 6K (3.72 mile) time was just over 22 minutes. Her top 5K (3.1 miles) was in the 18-minute range. She said her best time in the Bluegrass half-marathon was about a 7 minute, 10 second pace for the 13 miles (just under 1 hour, 40 minutes).

Lorenza realizes now she probably pushed herself too hard to chase her Olympic dream.

“I actually set myself back in my recovery because I was modifying my training rather than actually taking a full step back and letting stuff heal that needed to heal,” she said. “I made a lot of mistakes that hopefully I can help other runners not make when I become a physical therapist.”

Lorenza’s parents never pushed her to do any particular sport or activity when she was young.

“When I was a little kid, I would go out and chase butterflies throughout the hay fields and just have fun. My horse that I grew up with, we would learn from each other,” she said.

She was at a national pony club event showing her horse when she was invited to try out for the USA pentathlon team.

“That’s when it took off and I’ve just been competing ever since,” she said.

What about the 2025 Run The Bluegrass? Will she volunteer again or run?

“Oh, I want to run. This was fun but I miss being out there running,” she said.