ROME (ITALPRESS) – “I spent half of my 61 years devising and implementing with my collaborators a project that would give opportunity and dignity to the Italian Paralympic movement. I have achieved almost all the goals I set for myself, I am young and I feel I can still give a lot to the world of sports. For this reason, next June 26 I will run for the leadership of Coni.” In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Luca Pancalli, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Italian Olympic Committee. After making official his decision to leave the CIP, the race for the chair of the top executive of Italian sports.
“The two decisions are disjointed,” Pancalli explained, “because I do not want to keep two roads open. With the CIP the experience has definitely ended with the only regret of not having been able to finish guest quarters and sports hall of the Federal Center of the Tre Fontane in Rome, a task that will fall to my successor. If I do not find the necessary votes at Coni I will serenely close my career: I have no parachutes, I am not attached to an armchair, but rather to a wheelchair.”
Pancalli also talks about the Malagò affair, that is, the current number 1 of the Coni. “With Giovanni I am on very good terms and we are working together for the Milan-Cortina Games – explains the president of the CIP – but time is running out, there are already other candidates and I want to have the space I need to present my project. On the three-term limit I have never changed my mind: I find it wrong, I believe that in democracy only the vote of those who elect you counts. But I also think that rules should be respected. We know John’s character well, as well as his exuberance, generosity, and contribution to the growth of blue sport, which was formidable. His legacy does not frighten me; I will bring my personality and character as is the case with any turnover in the leadership of a political body. More than the way of expressing myself, I would like people to look at the resume: in addition to the CIP, I was vice president of the CONI for eight years, commissioner of the FIGC and Federdanza, and director of the Institute of Sport Science.”
His condition has never stopped him, and to top roles he is accustomed. “I have lived long on my skin: the look, the smile, the things not said but understood are thought by those who see and will see only the limitations that a disabled Coni president can have.”
“When I ran the Figc,” Pancalli continued, “I showed the country what a disabled person can do if he or she is put in a position to walk a path with equal opportunities. However, I would like to be judged and criticized for my political actions and not pitied or voted for because I am sitting in a wheelchair.”
The program to be pursued in case of success is already clear in his mind. “Working for the good of Italian sport in a context where, with the positive entry of Sport and Health, both the rules of the game and the players have changed. The care of relations with the federations, the need to find spaces and money to foster practitioners, the joy of seeing the smile of a child playing or competing for the first time and that of winning an Olympic medal are perfectly equal in both worlds. The high point of my career was getting Paralympic athletes’ military careers equalized with able-bodied athletes: that’s when I realized that through sports and competition, a huge message of equal dignity can be sent to the whole country. My motto is always the same: you can do it, you can do anything.”
-Photo Ipa/Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
