The Winter Olympics have just concluded with the ceremony at the Verona Arena and we were thrilled with truly extraordinary athletes who gave emotions and medals to our country. We still want to support athletes who dedicate all their strength and talent to what is the only competition between countries that is worth maintaining: sport. We really want to start again so let’s start again!
Today the torch of the Winter Paralympics is lit, always in Verona, always in that Arena which seems made especially to remind us that the circles of life and sport never end. There will be 665 athletes, 79 medal races, six disciplines and ten days of sport between Milan, Cortina and Val di Fiemme. A truly extraordinary event that we will follow, and I invite you to follow, in numerous live broadcasts and online streaming. Another great celebration of events, competitions and sports so similar to the Olympic Games that that “para”, which should indicate closeness, seems really too much.
I admit that with every Paralympics full of emotion and enthusiasm I can’t help but ask myself a simple question: why not have a unique event? While I understand the organizational difficulties, I dream of an event where each athlete competes in their own category, but in a unique context… it would be the best way to talk about and experience inclusion without ever mentioning it. It would also be an opportunity to show, understand and prove to the whole world that accessibility, the real one, does not just concern some, but works for everyone. A single calendar, a single medal collection, a single fire that burns for everyone. No more Olympics “and then” Paralympics…just the Games. I write it with a smile on my lips and with great hope because it doesn’t seem like much, but it would become a great sign to undermine the dynamic that is perpetuated in many areas of our society: in work, in school, in sport, in life… where too often there is a here and an elsewhere.
This time, however, the dream I share is more real than ever, it has a concrete precedent. At the Winter Universiade in Turin, just two months ago, for the first time in the history of the World University Games, athletes with and without disabilities competed on the same tracks, on the same days, parading in the same ceremonies and receiving the same medals. In alpine skiing and cross-country skiing, the standing, sitting and visually impaired categories were integrated into the program. No longer an experiment, but a preview of what we hope will soon be for all sports. I believe that any organizational difficulty is worth the effort of holding the Games together to abandon that trap in which we all get lost of “it doesn’t concern me”. There is a huge difference between being welcomed into a dedicated space and inhabiting the same world together… for everyone.
The opening ceremony from the Verona Arena and the first medals from tomorrow. We are ready to get excited in front of athletes ready to compete and certainly without any desire to be “special”. Because con-correre and compete have that prefix CON which makes all the difference in the world. So let’s do it too: let’s stand WITH these athletes. From home, from the sofa, from your smartphone or for the luckiest, on the slopes and playing fields. Anna also likes the Olympic and Paralympic Games and invites me: “Shall we watch WITH me?”
