Disabled Sports in Italy

If the World Paralympic movement brings the name of Ludwig Guttmann, called "De Coubertin of the disabled" by Pope John XXIII, in Italy, the "father" of the sports therapy and of the Paralimpics Games, was Dr. Antonio Maglio.

Without his work and his total dedication, which began from 1935, year of the doctorate in medicine and surgery at the University of Bari, until the day of his death in Rome on 7 January 1988, Rome and Italy would not have had the privilege to have give birth to the summer Paralympic Games, besides,.his intuitions helped thousands of disabled people in Italy to improve their health, the extension of life expectancy and their reintegration into civil society.

He was really the creator and advocate of the first Olympic Games for paraplegics.

Unfortunately, Italy, in the early 50's, lacked of a Culture in the field of disability, that put common people as objects of prejudices, often as the result of a disabled person’s refusal.

But Antonio Maglio brought a new concept of disability realizing, following the experience of more developed countries such as Germany and Britain, new therapeutic methods for neuro-lesioned patients.

The results of its new methods were immediately positive: the reduction in the mortality rate and the attenuation of depressive states in the subjects who were lucky to be included among those guests of the Paraplegic Center in Ostia "Villa Marina", which opened in June 1957 for will of Inail, of which Antonio Maglio was Deputy manager, and Primary of the Center which became quickly famous through the country and abroad.

He did exactly what Ludwig Guttmann practiced in Stoke Mandeville, but he expanded the programs multiplying physical activities through a lot of sports and using the competitive spirit as incentive for the patients, to react and find themselves and their skills: swimming, basketball, table-tennis, the weight and the javelin’s throw, archery, fencing and wheelchair race.

In this growth, the INAIL has played an important role because, driven by Antonio Maglio and some physical education teachers, sponsored the paraplegics sport, so much that in 1964 Italy participated with two representative athletes including one under the name of the INAIL (the other one under the name of Onig, National Company for war’s invalids) although united by the Tricolor.

By the comparison with the other nations at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo 1964 (at that time they were still called Stoke Mandeville’s International Games) emerged the backwardness of our movement in regard to countries such as France, England, USA, Spain, Holland and Germany all represented by a national Federation or Paralympic Committee recognized by its Olympic Committee and, in other cases, with direct State’s funding and support.

Until 1972 it was still the INAIL center of Ostia  to fund and encourage the sport of paraplegics and when the INAIL management passed to the Hospital regional Corporation, there was the riske not to participate to the Games in Heidelberg'72, due to a lack of funds.

Only in 1974, there was the establishment of the National Association for the paraplegics’s sport to promote, develop and regulate the sport of paraplegic as a way to recovery and to improve the common health, beginning to consider sports as a right fir all the disabled citizens.

So, for the first time Italy could participate to the European Championships of Athletics (Vienna 1977) and to those of wheelchair basketball (Holland 1977).

It was a first step, but there were a lot of needs, the national and international commitments multiplied rapidly, as the demand for sports by persons with other types of disabilities.

So, in 1980, the FISha was born(Italian Federation of Disabled Sports) and to this one joined various associations and federations representing various disabilities: the same ANSPI, FSSI (Silent Sports Federation of Italy) and the FICS (Italian Blind Sports Federation) until CONI recognized this corporation as a federation member of the Italian National Olympic Committee.

The 1981 saw a great manifestation in Rome of athletics, fencing, swimming and basketball, and at the Stadio dei Marmi, the historical performance of Canadian Arnie Boldt, who in the high jump, with just one leg, jumped the exceptional measure of 2 meters and 4 centimeters.

Boldt himself, two years later, represented all disabled people at the Sporty Jubilee celebrated by Pope John XXIII at the Olympic Stadium in Rome.

The CONI made the Act for the right to sport and Equal Opportunity, recognizing the FISha as the Italian Federation of Disabled Sport, carrying on the common desire of the three sports federations for disabled athletes (Fisha, Fics and Fssi) to have a single corporation.

Then the Olympic Committee, in 1990, gave to the disabled athletes the same dignity as not ones, and Paralympic athletes became more and more regarded at the same way as their Olympic "colleagues", until today, that the participation of Italian Team at the Paralympic Games is organized in the same way and the same principles of the Italian Team, which represents the country at the Olympic Games.

The only difference was in the prize that, in Sydney 2000, was 12 million liras for gold, 10 for silver and 8 for the bronze, figures much more low than those paid to winning athlets of the Olympic medals.

In 2006, on the eve of the Paralympic Winter Games in Torino 2006, the Board of Coni has considerably the prize of the winning athletes of Paralympic medals, now consisting of 70,000 euros for gold, 35,000 for silver and 20,000 for bronze.

Besides, for the first time in the Italian history, disabled athletes receive small cash awards by CIP, that, for some years, can rely on partnerships of Inail which is the main sponsor of the Paralympic Italian movement and that, with the Prosthetics Center of Vigorso of Budrio, sponsores with supplying of sports prosthesis of high-tech, Italian athletes of international renown.

Today the Paralympic movement has taken a further step in the juristic field.

The State has assigned additional duties to the Italian Federation for Disabled Sports as Italian Paralympic Committee (CIP), an institution that goes beyond the simple preparation of sporting teams committed to participate in the Championships and to the international calendar’s manifestations, sanctioned by the International Paralympic Committee.

In fact, the law establishing this panel, and the subsequent recent implementation’s decree, recognized the social value of the organization which wants to guarantee the sport right in all its expressions "promoting the wide dissemination of sport for disabled persons in each age and population band ", so that each disabled person has the possibility to improve their welfare and to find a right dimension in the civil life through sport as a way of recovery, physical and cultural growth, for an education both of disabled person and not ones.