SKIING: A SPRAY OF ‘INVISIBLE’ AZURE
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It’s not a novelty that the success of a disciple,
especially in terms of audience, is determined by and depends directly
on the technical skill and the charisma of our home champions. The Italian
skiing had the luck in the last ten year to have on disposal the agonistic
level of a couple simply stratospheric world level. Alberto Tomba and Deborah
Compagnoni have won in their careers all what was possible, catching trophies
and acknowledgments in a continual stream in the “white circle”.
The retirement almost joint of the multi-awarded
athletes could be slowly absorbed only if it could take place a generational
replacement on a level with; but the year zero, after their forfeit, revealed
itself as a period of least satisfactions.
The television and its choices of programming,
we were saying, are the mirror of the success or the lack of liking of
an agonistic discipline. It’s not a case that Mediaset, after getting the
rights from competition, has slowly opted for a program schedule inside
which the skiing has space in no high exposure timetable. Lacking the champion
at the cutting edge, the recorded listening was indeed almost off the acceptable.
So it happens that the day Italy succeeded in
shaking its agonistic numbness off winning the same journey two world races,
few faithful followers could enjoy the triumph of Ghedina and Isolde Kostner.
Furthermore, only the victory of the azure downhill skier in Val Gardena
could be seen in the night summary, since as regard to the race won by
the azure skier at St Moritz, Mediaset preferred to opt for the no production
of the event without some buyer coming forward.
So it ended that a journey, finally historical
for our skiing, we didn’t live since the times of Compagnoni and Tomba,
has been practically “blacked out” to the fans of the movement.
Television choices and strategies of any broadcasting
station surely have a logic; but then it’s not the case to cry shame when
on the opposite a Pay TV owns the rights of events as Wimbledon or the
Volley World League, and eventual azure successess “denied” to the public.
Those are the new market rules, in the good and evil. Any product is paid,
directly or not, by taxpayers and it is much more correct to show the corresponding
prices of one’s own exclusives in the shop-window instead of imposing a
licence-fee a priori and then chose the program schedule basing on criteria
a lot questionable.
Getting back to the agonistic events, it was
since January 97 that we did not get a so important dual.
By then it succeeded the same Christian Ghedina
in the downhill race of Wengen and Deborah Compagnoni in the giant of Zwiesel.
Seven triumphs in whole, men and woman, in the common denominator of the
Compagnoni and Alberto Tomba, able to be present as far as five times on
the podium when the opposite sex “colleague” succeeded in emulating their
undertakes.
Golden times already behind; even if the nowadays
Kostner, mainly after the serious accident occurred to the Croat Kostelic,
seems to be a reliable candidate for conquering the feminine World Cup.
Let’s be content with, waiting for new champions
at the cutting edge of a winning movement, these sprays of azure in a discipline
generally dominated by the Austrians.
Hoping that the next great undertake there will
be also the compatibility with the television shop-window.
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Paolo Ghisoni |
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`