sport after the virus

Sport is only one of the sectors on which the impact of Covid-19 risks being tremendous. But it is an important sector, especially when a common place is swept away. It is clear that the mass-media universe, in 99% of cases, documents the damage inflicted on elite sport, and in particular on hyper-professional football. Television rights, which fuel top football more than any other source of income, are at risk, with inevitable repercussions on salaries.

But it would be guilty to forget the basic sport, that is, the one that involves families, schools, sports centers, and rehabilitation centers. In particular, let's focus on the latter aspect. For many boys and girls with disabilities, sport represents a fundamental opportunity for socializing and growth. For them, isolation involves even more serious imbalances, because sport is part of the rehabilitation-therapeutic process: an outlet. The example of the Paralympic athletes, moreover, is a driving force for the whole of society, if we think of the dark moments that they had to go through, after the accidents, comparable to those of the whole of humanity, hit by the coronavirus.

Thanks to physical and competitive activity, they have demonstrated the resilience capacity, which all of us now need. They have shown the ability to get up off the ground, as we all must try to do.

This is why the problem is not having postponed the Olympics and European football championships for a year, but also guaranteeing economic support for this part of the country, which deserves to be helped. The physical distancing, to which Covid-19 has called us, goes hand in hand with the risk of social distancing: the poor even poorer. We must not take away from the children of those families the right to sport, as a source of psycho-physical well-being.

As Luca Pancalli, president of the Italian Paralympic Committee, wrote: "We must work to ensure that sport is not measured only by the number, which identifies the impact on the country's GDP, but also by that indefinite value, which derives from investment in people: on human capital ".

Carlo Nesti
NP may 2020