Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
THEThe case of rebel gymnasts is very interesting, because it goes beyond sport. The story should not be confused with the scandal that devastated the American federation of artistic gymnastics, which expressed the greatest talent of recent years, Simone Biles, but also a story of abuse involving the team doctor Larry Nassar. In Italy, mind you, there is no talk of anything of the kind.
Three rhythmic gymnastics champions – Nina Corradini, Anna Basta and Giulia Galtarossa – have denounced a system of pressure on the verge of oppression: «I weighed thirty-six kilos but I was still considered fat, I was taking laxatives, I haven’t had a period for a year…».
Italian sport also has the legal tools to get to clarify the story, and eventually there is always the judiciary. But a general principle, regardless of the names and individual events that are always different from each other, can be deduced from now on.
Elite sport, at the Olympic level, is under appalling pressures. On the one hand, there are very young people; on the other hand there are adult people, who exercise a power over the souls and also over the bodies of the students.
In extreme cases this power is exercised in unacceptable forms. But very often the stresses come, even without abuse, to a degree of pressure that a normal person cannot bear..
Nadia Comaneci, the greatest gymnast of all time, fell apart from sports competitions and CeauȘescu’s Romania. The film King Richard with Will Smith it shows only the bright side of the obsession in which Venus and Serena Williams’ father raised his daughters to become champions.
Rafael Nadal has long been separated from the man who at a very high price made him the greatest tennis player in history, his uncle Toni. Pygmalion can be a demiurge or an executioner. And sometimes the two figures overlap almost to coincide.
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