Italian racing gord

Italian racing gold

Paolo Ghisoni

“Compelling and repeated marches to the European peaks”.Who knows how many Italians would be happy to read a similar headline in the heart of the financial pages.

For now, it is once again the great army of sports fans who feel contented.
In particular, the enthusiasts and fans of one of the most followed and diffused of Track and Field events,- middle-distance running. In fact walk-racing and the 10,000 meters were the feathers in the cap for Italian athletes (the “azzurri”) at the European Athletics championships contended for in Hungary; two events acknowledged as consuming and gruelling – true occasions of iridescent display par excellence. And on this occasion dominated by particular azzurri capable of focusing on likewise historic finishing lines.There are those who sometimes stoke up questions of genetics, of presumably scant worth, in order to justify the absence of an Italian champion in a determined discipline (read “tennis”!).
A presumed DNA that is little inclined to suffering and sacrifice, that historical and climatic reasons might associate as a penalizing element to be put alongside other physical deficiencies due to ethnic factors. But how then can they explain the fantastic results achieved by our athletes in Budapest in the light Track and Field events involving resistance and dogged consistency? And also, how can we not point out the phenomenal 1-2-3 in the men's 10,000 metes by Boldini – Goffi and Modica added to the likewise authoritative performance of the Sidoti-Alfridi duo in the women's 10 kilometer walk,- and these are not isolated incidents.
It is our good fortune that a new chapter has been written at Budapest, the continuation of a victorious story that began to be penned several seasons ago.For years the Italian “boot” has been carried along on the wings of enthusiasm and ringing results.

A fashionable boot that is setting the trend thanks to consistent performances and an undoubted pool of talent. Not for the first time is the European continent discovering the presence of a world power in its midst, in fact - of long-distance runners.The feats of Dorando Petri at the London Olympics in 1908, where his caracole at the finishing tape so moved the 80,000 spectators, are now part of our national heritage perhaps more assimilable to sports mythology. Back then, running was not fashionable and the marathon was certainly not the most popular or admired of events. Today on the other hand distance running has become the hobby of thousands of Italians who commit themselves to hundreds of seasonal races. Ours has developed spontaneously but has deep roots and a large base of participants who thus form a vast and fertile reserve to draw from. The “blue school” has gradually progressed from the timid approach steps at the beginning of the 1980s to the conventional giants of the speciality decisively overtaking them at the century' close.
Twenty years that have brought to the limelight people like Bordin, Pizzolato, Poli and another fabulous trident in the circumstances of another European championships.

It was in 1986 at Stuttgart, after the 10,000 meters, that the podium was completely coloured in blue, with Mei, Cova and Antibo taking the first three places.
In the same games Bordin and Pizzolato took off in the marathon. Along the way to the triumphs of our times, there have been many celebrations of success. The gold medal of the faultless Gelindo Bordin in the marathon at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and which he repeated in the European championships two years later at Spalato, ahead of another azzurro, Poli. To close with the lesser but certainly not negligible efforts of Pizzolato and Poli in that most classic of long-distance competitions, i.e. the 42 Kilometers and 195 meters through the streets of the Big Apple, the New York marathon. To demonstrate that the female athletes representing Italy have nothing at all to do with the so-called “weaker sex” concept, they too sparkled at Budapest in confirmation of the bounty of a growing pool of excellence. Truth to tell, in chronological order it was they who started off the triumphal tricolour kermesse. Annarita Sidoti and Erika Alfridi did well to steal the script from their male colleagues and to dominate the 10K women's walk event with a first and second place respectively. For the Sicilian athlete, this year's European gold goes together with the even more special gold medal won in Athens at the world championships last year. A “double” never before achieved by an Italian female athlete that Sidoti can put in her display case together with another European medal triumph at Spalato in 1990.

Erika Alfridi has a different tale to tell: a butterfly suddenly let fly after too long an incubation. For her, the consolation of an excellent athletic recovery which, from a good-level walker too accustomed to disqualifications who had decided to leave the sport at the end of 1991, brought her a European silver medal. It is said that the two practically live in symbiosis, complementing their poles-apart characters and so forming a sort of small family. This would appear to be the secret of what many now call the “pasta connection”, referring to the Italian marathon runners: a fundamental harmony that permeates through all of the training methods.
The merit for this convergence of ideas and objectives is attributed to an ex-athlete who is now in charge of the speciality at national level, Massimo Ferrari from the city of Ferrera. When he took over, he found himself dealing with not one but ten different “families”, geographically decentralized, none of whom could make progress on their own. With the help of another ex-athlete of note,

Damilano, the Federal movement was able to reunite and get all the irons into the same fire, yet keeping intact the natural competitive instinct; in other words, rivalry and respect.
Like the values that we nowadays only seem to see in the most puritanical of films. But which, to judge from the results of our sportsmen and sportswomen, still know how to lead to a happy ending.

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