A.Sch.

The italian race walking hobble along to the saddest of its anniversary: in a few days, on august 6th, it will be one year since the news spreaded that Alex Schwazer was found positive to EPO. A bomb exploded during the London 2012 Games, shocking the italian team olympic routine. A case that it is still producing side effects, now that the criminal investigation is reporting more disturbing details.

After twelve months how many ruines are still there? How the reconstruction process is evolving? The gold mine of the italian athletics lost his most important athlete and it has been ruined from an image damage that it will be very difficult to repair.

But there are some signals to look ahead: U18 World Championships, Junior and U23 European Championships showed that italian boys and girls are still race walking. And they know how to do it, even without a tall and blond model. Three international events for youngsters and three medals: Noemi Stella (bronze in Donetsk, and she is only 16 years old), Vito Minei (silver in Rieti) e Antonella Palmisano (bronze in Tampere) they witnessed that the race walking goes on, step by step. 

They are all from Puglia, an area where a better youth recruitment has been done, with coach Tommaso Gentile involved in this proselytism action.

Three youth medals are not enough for coming to terms with Schwazer. It is a long road to make a young prodigy into a champion. And there is no shortcut, especially in this time. There is a don Lorenzo Milani (a sort of patron for race walkers coming from Taranto) quote: “You can become a man, being a beast. And you can become a saint, being a man. But you cannot become a saint just in one step, being a beast”.

So the italian race walking, after a brutal year, it is now looking for his human face.

Andrea Schiavon*

*journalist for the italian daily national newspaper Tuttosport and author of “Cinque cerchi e una stella”, the biography of the Israeli race walker Shaul Ladany to with wich he recently won the Bancarella Sport Prize