Would you like to start the interview by explaining what you are involved in and what is your personal biography?
I graduated from classical school and went to medical college in Pavia and graduated in 1980. I then registered as a publicist in 1976 and as a medical officer on January 31, 81. I became a medical officer in the Air Force. I specialized in sports medicine, orthopedic medicine and aviation space medicine. For 30 years I was the sports physician for professional basketball teams. I was on the Consiglio Superiore di Sanità and director general of the Italian Institute of Social Medicine. For four years I was central director of prosthetic rehabilitation for INAIL, my leadership was in direct contact with disability. I was editor of the SUPERABILE Magazine, which covers issues on disability, my direction was, among other things, the official sponsor of the Italian Paralympic Committee. I have participated in two Olympics, in London and Vancouver. I taught Human Physiology for 30 years at the University of Medicine in Pavia, then moved on to teach motor sciences, and finally I also had the opportunity to teach at a telematics university, IUL.
On the occasion of this year’s Olympics, I ask you, what do you think is the importance of the Para Olympics today? Have they become a great way to narrate physical disabilities?
Our society has the task of defending the frail, that is, all those who are in a physically and psychologically difficult condition. But this comes at a very high cost, and everyone has the task of collaborating in creating the funds dedicated to creating the structures, materials and everything these people need.
To support the cost, disability can also become a productive world, and focusing on communication can be one of the solutions; because it effectively conveys a message that can reach as many people as possible. The Paralympics are the best example of this.
However, sport, whatever discipline one is talking about and at whatever level one is doing it, remains the most basic, easiest, and most accessible time and place for integration and recovery. It can be the time when people can find their own sphere of activity, application, growth and knowledge and the place where they recover something they have lost. It should be used not only as a first new approach to life after injury but also as an opportunity for reintegration into society.
People who are struggling to regain their place in the world are able in sport to put their new skills into action. They can do something and can be an asset as much in sports as in society and in employment. If society as a whole recovers the will to also use these people for what they can give, the person with disabilities regains dignity.
All of this is also demonstrated and communicated through the Olympics so they are an immense resource not to be underestimated.
During this year’s Para-Olympic Games there was a transformative impact of technologies in sports, what do you think?
Technology is ready to find the solution, and where there is a ground to test it, it grows and reinvents itself. These very big events are opportunities for communication and media to increase visibility on a world that the rest of the time is forgotten and disregarded by most. But the vast majority of the state’s expenditures are on health and social systems. We try to understand that these are not only expenditures but also opportunities.
Would you care to express your thoughts about the connection: level of happiness of personal experience and Para Olympics?
My personal experience in the Para Olympics is of the individual and it is the same as the normal people in the Olympics, all athletes in that context have a goal and work to achieve it. Athletes have a higher regard for themselves, but what struck me personally is that many athletes, with physical disabilities, saw the positive side of what happened to them i.e., being able to be considered by society and become somebody. This, in my opinion, has absolute value for everyone not only for people with disabilities.
Finally, I would still like to emphasize the importance that must be given to sports, which is a time of recovery, reintegration and a help for families.