Phenomenal in track cycling, he participated in bobsleigh at the Winter Games: “I wanted to change the sport in Italy but I gave up. Our problem is the base”
Summing up Antonella Bellutti is impossible. It is easier to list: two Olympic gold medals in two different track cycling specialties (pursuit in Atlanta, points race in Sydney), the only Italian to have been part of the national team of three different federations (athletics, left early due to a physical problem after being the Italian junior record holder in the 100 hurdles, cycling and bobsleigh), the only one to have participated in both the summer and winter Olympics. But even now that she is 57 it is difficult to categorize her. She was a teacher, technical director of the blue track, innkeeper, candidate for the presidency of CONI. “I hate definitions. I try to say what I do based on the pleasure it gives me: first of all I write, which is a way to express myself and say what I think, and remain anchored to sport; then I deal with Assist, the organization that defends gender rights and equality in sport; finally for the University of Verona I deal with double careers, the possibility for athletes to continue their studies”.
Is changing a lot an advantage or does it have a price?
“When a road closes, it is an advantage to find energy and resources and vision to open another one. The price is that you have to start again. And you have to do it: it’s not that the change passes and you jump on it.”
And have you given up on the idea of changing the sport?
“It’s a world full of contradictions that must be resolved with radical interventions. Yes, I’ve given up on it. But we should never say never.”
In 2002 she was called to be the technical director of the national cycling teams. It lasted very little.
“I talked about it with the president, without going into further detail. The next day I announced my assignment in the newspapers. I tried for months to get a contract to regularize my position, which was not at all clear in the face of so much responsibility, I didn’t even have a budget. I had been put in the meat grinder to demonstrate the federation’s desire for change, if I was there the problem of equal opportunities was solved. After six months I wrote an open letter to Repubblica in which I distanced myself from a role that had never really been mine.”
Women drive Italian sport. Why this void at a technical and managerial level?
“The technical aspect is a consequence of the managerial one. And presidents are like diamonds: forever.”
What is the first problem of sport in Italy?
“The base, the practice of sport: it is very difficult to do sport if you are not involved in the competitive mechanism. If sport does not enter permanently into schools and does not become everyone’s right, we have a problem. And competitive sport only works thanks to the enormous expense for military sports groups. Ours is an inverted model, with an elite that costs us a lot and an almost sedentary base.”
Your first memory of your Olympics?
“Sydney, winning again after 4 troubled years. Overwhelming emotion, I cried for two days.”
Closing at the highest moment is a marvel.
“I had decided before, regardless of the outcome. But then it was magical. Those times when everything goes as it should, a feeling of harmony that makes you feel part of the universe.”
Is it true that it was the Rai journalist Franco Bragagna who proposed the two-man bob to you?
“He called me to tell me that they were looking for a crew that could get people talking, the other was Gerda Weissensteiner, gold in Lillehammer in the luge. I immediately said no, but Gerda didn’t give up. We were a little presumptuous, it was our Olympic debut but there were nations that had been doing the 2-man bob for many years. We went to the World Cup and there were 50 crews: the others had the electric platform, we arrived with the old bob of the Huber brothers, carried around with the fruit truck”.
Today, kids aren’t afraid to talk about mental health. Fem Van Empel, a talent, left cycling at 23 because she no longer enjoyed it.
“Now we can say that a hyper-specialized and hyper-early sport is a way of life that burns you and leaves you no escape.”
She presented a study revealing that 77% of female athletes do not have a contract despite a commitment of 10 months a year, and almost one in two feels discriminated against.
“The responses were mainly volleyball, basketball, football and fencing athletes, sports in which women are strong and the federations are presumed to be more attentive. It makes me think that by extending the study to other federations the results would be even worse.”
Have you ever felt discriminated against?
“Yes, I started when I was little. I am a healthy and serene bearer of discrimination.”
Woman, talented, lesbian, vegan. She is demanding.
“Absolutely yes. And I have to say that I felt the stigma more for being vegan than for being homosentimental.”
Are women’s rights in danger?
“Yes, we must understand that nothing remains immutable, nothing lasts forever.”
Did you understand why men kill women?
“Yes, I understood it. It happens where women are aware of having to self-determine. Where the patriarchy is put in crisis, the reaction is this. And the patriarchy is well rooted, the road is still long, there is a need for great cultural tools”.
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