by Francesco Vitale
In the photo: Fabio Di Salvo, first on the right, with the referees present in Tampere; among them Maestro Giuseppe Zaccaro, President of the National Commission of Match Officials, the only Italian referee present at the Tokyo Olympics
Years of passion and karate study to reach an important international milestone. This is the story of Fabio Di Salvo, born in Campobassano in 1980, an international referee who, in recent days, has obtained the qualification as a European referee, taking a challenging exam in Tampere, Finland.
Di Salvo has been regularly attending the tatami since he was very young, alternating the sport discipline with the lawyer study: he began studying karate at the age of eight under the careful and competent guidance of the late Maestro Giovanni Ferrone, obtaining good results in his competitive career.
As an athlete he participated in several Italian championships and international competitions and in 2004 obtained the bronze medal at the Italian University Championships in kumite.
After his career as a karateka, Fabio Di Salvo started that as a referee as early as 2008 as an Italian referee and from 2020 in the international field. Achieving the qualifications of “EKF Kumite Judge A” and “EKF Kata Judge B” is a further step forward in an arbitration career that had already been covered with great value by Maestro Ferrone, the undisputed reference point of Molise karate.
Currently, Di Salvo is the only one from Molise to have a role of such importance in FIJLKAM (the official federation in which the disciplines of Judo, Wrestling and Karate converge, under the aegis of CONI) and in the EKF – European Karate Federation – the continental federation recognized by the IOC.
This milestone comes, moreover, at a significant moment for the international and Italian movement of karate, in fact this year the martial art of Okinawa arrived for the first time at the Olympics and Italy has climbed to the top step of the podium. with Luigi Busà in kumite.
