BRIGHTON — It was an innocent mistake. Myles Amine was only seven or eight years old, after all.
But his grandfather gently set him straight.
“I remember the first time I told somebody I was Italian,” Amine, of Brighton, told The Daily. “He corrected me and told me I was Sammarinese.
“It just shows you Sammarinese are very prideful about the fact they’re the oldest independent republic in the world. It gets confused with Italy.”
That’s understandable, given the geography of San Marino, the fifth-smallest country in the world. The entire 23.5-square-mile nation, with a population of about 33,900 citizens known as Sammarinese, is surrounded by Italy.
Amine’s maternal great-grandfather emigrated from San Marino to the United States in the early 1900s. Some of the traditions were kept alive in the family home while he was growing up, but he’s become more immersed in the culture since he and his brother, Malik, began representing San Marino on the world wrestling stage in 2019.
The brothers have Sammarinese citizenship through their great-grandfather.
Myles Amine won the first Olympic wrestling medal for San Marino in Tokyo in 2021, capturing bronze in freestyle at 86 kilograms (190 pounds). His achievement came just days after trap shooter Alessandra Perilli won the first two Olympic medals ever for the tiny nation, the second in a mixed team event with Gian Marco Berti.
“The three of us all being the first medalists in the Olympics was something that called for a big celebration, which we totally embraced,” Amine said. “I went to San Marino after the last Olympics and spent five days there and celebrated and took it all in.”
Amine hopes to have another medal celebration in San Marino this summer, this one of the gold variety, after competing in the Summer Olympics in Paris.
He became the first Livingston County athlete to qualify for two Olympic seasons when he won a bronze medal last September in the World Wrestling Championships in Serbia. Amine qualified at the same event in 2019 by finishing fifth, the final qualifying place.
Since he began competing for San Marino, Amine visits the country twice a year, usually after a big competition in Europe and in December for a year-end awards ceremony.
He’s come to learn more about the culture of his mother’s side of the family through his wrestling career.
“The majority of things are very similar between that region of Italy and the independent Republic of San Marino,” Amine said. “There’s something I can’t put my finger on that makes it different, and that little thing is a really important thing. They have a special kind of charisma to them. The traditions were something I knew about, but I was really able to see them and take them in fully when I visited there. It brought everything to light.”
Amine has lived in Livingston County his entire life, beginning his schooling in Hartland before attending Brighton Area Schools from second through eighth grade. He enrolled at Detroit Catholic Central in high school before competing at the University of Michigan.
He’s been able to connect with distant relatives who live in San Marino.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Amine said. “It’s really opened my eyes to how beautiful that country is and how the people treat me like family there. It’s probably been one of the best parts of this whole thing, just going and being able to link up with my heritage and my roots and really let those grow.”
Whether or not Amine wins another medal in Paris, the experience will have deeper meaning this time around, because family and friends will be able to share it with him. Because of COVID restrictions, spectators weren’t allowed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
This time around, Amine will get the full Olympic experience.
Amine will try treating the Olympics like any other tournament in his long wrestling career. Having previous Olympic experience should help him maintain that perspective.
“A lot of people will be looking at it as something new and eye-opening,” Amine said. “For me, it’s just trying to treat it like clockwork — go in there and try to complete the job I have to do.
“Obviously, it’s a dream of mine to win an Olympic gold medal, but I just have to focus on one match at a time. I consider it like six-minute blocks. In order to win the Olympics, you have to win four matches; that’s 24 minutes of wrestling.”
Only two other athletes from Livingston County have compared in the Olympics. Debra Ochs of Howell won a bronze medal in archery in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Pinckney’s Jake Vedder, who is still actively competing, was on the U.S. snowboard team in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.
Will Amine stick around four more years for a shot at a third Olympics? He’s not thinking that far ahead.
“I’m taking it year to year right now,” he said. “To think about the next Olympic cycle, anybody who does that is just torturing themselves, because it’s a really long time. In my wrestling career, the biggest skill I’ve learned to hone in on is to just appreciate the present moment.”
— Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan.
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Brighton wrestler Myles Amine looking to medal again in second Summer Olympics
