Peruvian-born rower Giuseppe Lanzone, who will represent the United States in the London Games, credits his childhood in a peninsular district of the city of Callao for putting him on an Olympic path.

The athlete said in an interview with Efe that growing up in La Punta, an upper-middle-class district of Peru’s main port city that is home mainly to descendants of Italian immigrants, marked his life by putting him in constant contact with the ocean.

“I grew up running in the waves, playing soccer and sailing with my family,” Lanzone said in Princeton, New Jersey, where he is preparing for his second Olympics with the rest of the U.S. men’s eight crew.