It is the luminous face of the medal of the athletes-genius/coaches relationship, when you win, that the athletics world championship is being left to us. Nadia is trained by Dad Giuliano; Mattia from his mother Kathy Seck, who admitted that she had scolded him after the race for the bib torn in the euphoria, a risk for which disqualification could be risked.
Giorgio Cagnotto, today a happy grandfather of Maya and Lisa, was a diving, Olympic silver in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976, then technical director of the National Diving National team, whose tip of Diamante, between 2008 and 2016, was his daughter Tania.
Cagnotto, at the Athletics World Championships we see many cases: what are the complexities and what are the aspects instead that facilitate in combining double parent-coach role?
«It is not easy, because if there is no manual from which to learn to be a parent, it less than the decalogue that you teach you to combine the role of parent and that of technician. Looking back, it comes to mind that in my experience I have never forgotten that I was also a father, I have always had an instinct for protection, Tania has also reproached me sometimes to have never pushed too much in case of tiredness, to avoid injuries. I can’t say if a pure coach in the same situation would have pushed to see where he could arrive. But I know that my meter of mine also applied it to the rest of the team ».
Ever had moments of tension with his daughter in Bordovasca?
«In training yes, it is normal: it happens that it is discussed, that there are divergences of views. At that moment you are the coach, he also represents the authority, and maybe it happens that there is tension, but then when you are close when you go down to the arena where you fight for medals, things change and a team is turned upon: we never took the discussion on the trampoline and I in Bordovasca. At that moment all the contrasts have always gone to diminish as of enchantment. And I must say that it was like this also with the other athletes, I also experienced with them similar emotions. They tell me: with a son it is different, but it is not so true. When you play the medal the emotions are those. Then, of course, in Rio 2016, after the disappointment of London (fourth place for 20 cents) we took the collection at home also with the interests (silver in the synchro paired with Dallapè and Bronze di Tania from the 3 -meter -meter trampoline) “.
If one does only the coach, however, you end up training or the race and everyone returns to his house, if you are fathers you can not take the races home?
“Tania started with my wife (Carmen Casteiner ex Piattormista): at 7-8 years the basic setting given her, so you saw ourselves all day, but our family pact was that once at home the dives were left out of the door, at the table we were talking about anything else and we were always good at keeping faith in this regard. Even after I started to train her, I considered Tania part of the team, divers were talked to her in the context of the team, even more so when we went to do full immersion in Belluno, when in Bolzano the swimming pool was closed, there was a nice climate the boys had fun staying out, but when then we returned home it was home “.
In your case what determined the change from Mamma Coach to Dad Coach?
«It happened because it happened that Tania and Carmen, after having lived the dynamics and tensions of training, found themselves immersed at home in those of the school and the tasks and the risk was that it was too much. So we divided the roles: Dad was the coach, mom the mother who worried he was going well at school, was a very natural step ».
Is there a risk of always seeing the son – kid and not the mature athlete who has perhaps become the risk of always a coach for a coaching father?
«After the disappointment of London, Tania realized that there was a need for a change: that fourth place for 20 cents for a short period has a little marked and she worried about seeing me and I, if a race was not going well. Little lasted, because, even if the first days later London looked like a mourning in the family and there you would have given your head in the wall for regret, then since you are the most mature you have to rationalize and I arrived soon: the problems are others in life and that if we call them Olympic games, while investing so much effort, it means we have the privilege of living a game and we must not lose the size of reality. But it was quite physiological at that moment to put me a little aside, to remain technical director, and let Tania train with Oscar Bertone with whom he was well. Francesca Dallapè who dived with Tania in Synchro was very good at adapting. I think this was also physiological: a father, even a coach father, must take note that the children grow up ».
Never had the problem of managing the disappointment of the other and vice versa and that the disappointments added, especially in a sport in which there is a judgment that has a subjectivity?
«The thing I always repeated to Tania is that to make that life you have to go crazy that athletic gesture, you must be in love with what you do, and this applies to dives, for tennis, for the musical instrument. Then it is true that we do not even have a meter and time trial, so sometimes the penalty on the part of someone can be there, but if you are good at the end they cannot reset a career, the accounts are made in the end. Also because in the career of an athlete there are more moments of disappointment of the successes, because one does not always win, unless one is Klaus Dibiasi (laughs) ».
Do you risk projecting your aspirations on the child?
“I am a post -war, I was born in 1947, we had nothing but we had everything and for me it was a gift to be able to play sports, travel the world, sometimes in places for the uncomfortable era, to get to Minsk to Volgograd you were around weeks, my mother maybe not felt for 40 days and worried. I had no ambitions to project, Tania already dived at a fair level, but I have not been to tell her “I in my time”, everyone lives his own, and she already dived at a discreet level did not know of my results, it was a German opponent to ask her: “But is your father that Giorgio?” “.
Have you ever like a moment like the one between Gianni and Larissa in Tokyo even once, in case of negative moments?
“I would never say, indeed I remember very well the moment when in London 2012 I saw Tania look and see that she had arrived fourth for 20 cents, at that moment the only instinct was approaching me to embrace her and share that negative emotion with her. Because let’s never forget that sport gives intense emotions, they are not all beautiful, but they are emotions. And, as I am done, it is still better to live them together between people who keep each other and share them, than everyone for themselves. There is no manual, there is no rule, but for us it was natural like this ».
