Youth games without rhetoric

“I live in Rome, I live in Genoa.” Words of a great poet, Giorgio Caproni, from which we want to start, revisiting them, for this Genoese stage of the cultural journey in sporting Italy.In Rome, more precisely in the offices of the sports department of the Presidency of the council, he has been living for some idea, the resurrection of the Youth Gamescreation of the onestiano genius dated 1969, which in its almost thirty years of life was able to become an important symbolic, anthropological and social piece of Italian sporting culture, so much so that it later became the object of constant nostalgic re-enactment, and, in part, through the lament of his absence, also a ready-to-use justification tool for the analysis of Italian sporting failures in major international events.

Three days ago, with the signing of an interministerial protocol, the Minister for Sport Andrea Abodi has in fact formalized, starting from next school year, the rebirth of the Games, in forms yet to be defined, but which should for the moment focus on lower secondary schools. Echoing Caproni, that same idea not only lives in Genoa, but has lived in the flesh for many years, to be exact in Pavilion B of the International Fair. They are not called Youth Games, it’s called Torneo Ravano-Paolo Mantovani Cup, but forms, spirit and modalities are those of a happy marriage between school and sporting competitions, surprising in Italian latitudes, in which everything that should be in the ideal model of the contemporary Youth Games appears.

One of the Genoese places Caproni loved most was Piazza Bandiera, in the center of which stands a statue of Aeneas fleeing from Troy in flames with his old father Anchises on his shoulders, and his son Ascanio held by the hand. Even the Torneo Ravano is a matter of family custody, cultivated by the daughters Ludovica and Francesca against the idea that their great father, Paolo Mantovani, had in 1985 to give the city a school tournament directly organized by Sampdoria, an idea so beautiful and genuine that over the decades it has become the heritage of the whole city, and not just of its Dorian part. Until 2009 the tournament was reserved only for football, including the women’s version, then the opening to basketball and volleyball, before the great multi-sports turning point of recent years, also corresponding to a parallel managerial turning point in which the organization of the tournament passed directly into the hands of the Mantovani family, through a foundation supported by partners and donors and local institutions, starting with the municipality, an effort that makes participation in the tournament entirely free.

It is a warmly recommended exercise for all people involved in various capacities in the elaboration of Italian educational and sporting policies to spend even just half a day overlooking the Marina of Genoa, zigzagging between the various fields set up on the second floor of the Fair to see children and third, fourth and fifth grade girls challenge each other in football, volleyball, basketball, rugby, field hockey, try their hand at the various tests of athletics, compete in cycling, fencing and even sailing. A sensory magic of multi-sports, a keyword which, always in an ideal model, we hope will be the nerve center of the new Youth Games: multi-sports as the possibility of changing and experimenting with new disciplines from year to yearin this perspective going far beyond the twentieth-century imprint that linked the Onestiani Youth Games to athletics, the queen of sporting creation.

The numbers are remarkable: 5,516 participants, 704 registered teams, and a second magic, that of involving all the schools of the city in the literal sense, from the very elitist private international colleges to the schools in the popular neighborhoods, in an expansive projection that embraces more and more schools from all over Liguria, and some even from Piedmont. Then there are the intelligent rules: everyone must play and contribute, not just the best-versed and the best, and an impeccable organizational framework, a calm chaos also open to parents, the free game kit for all participants complete with a special dedicated to Gianluca Vialli, the artisanal media coverage made up of photos in real time for each boy or girl in the competition, as happens in theme parks, and still educational workshops, the free canteen, up to the indispensable ceremony of the award ceremonies. An attention to detail that is the salt of a heartfelt event, a piece of culture and city life in which parents accompany their children getting excited by the memory of when it was their fathers, now grandparents, who brought them.

Still thinking about public policies, there is a fact to keep in mind: school sport (which does not only mean physical education) can really be for everyone, while extra-curricular sport, data in hand, does not even reach two thirds of the Italian youth population, and this silent exclusion often holds back the poorest, in a situation which today, unlike in the past, weaves motor and learning difficulties, overweight and obesity, poor school results into a vicious circle. There is an emblematic story told to us by Angelo, one of the tournament’s collaborators, which sums up all these things, that of Yassine, a child with severe difficulties entering the classroom and severe motor disabilities, who is persuaded to follow a preparation course for the rugby tournament, organized in his school by a local sports club (the tournament does not directly take care of this part of the approach to competitions, which is entrusted to spontaneity from below in the various schools, as proof of how much the event is felt), and then participate in the Ravano and win it, succeeding in the most important success, that of winning the exclusion in class.

Playing sports is useful for life and scholastic skills, as we have been writing for some time on the Sports Sheet, and fun, not obsessed, competitive spirit is needed for the education of boys and girls. For all these reasons, the idea of ​​bringing the Youth Games back to life is important and worthy, and we hope that a debate can arise on how. Of course, with the lens of disenchantment one wonders if the new Games will “inhabit” or “live”, if the bureaucratic jungle and the cohabitation between institutional worlds as different as those of school and sport will be able to give birth to an event tailored to the Alpha generation , capable of truly leaving its mark on the Italian sporting culture of the coming decades. One also wonders if the key is not directly exporting the tournament to make it flourish in every region of Italy, knowing full well that its success lies in its belonging to a particular family and citizen history, a mirror of the plural Italy of the hundred cities, and therefore difficult to replicate in the too long nation, as Arab travelers wrote in the late Middle Ages. However, we have one certainty: to think about the sporting policies of the future, you need to go through Genoa.
Moris Gasparri