After the defeat of the Dragons Basketball from the C Gold playoffs due to a broken scoreboard at the Toscanini, the issue of the shortcomings of the city’s sports facilities is back in the spotlight, the subject of a question time by the center-right councilor Claudiu Stanasel to which he replied Luca Vannucci. On the specific case to our microphones, the councilor for sport, yesterday afternoon, attributed to the basketball company a part of responsibility for the failure to replace the damaged backboard, making it clear that the Municipality had not been made aware of the need for equipment (scaffolding and mechanisms to lift the heavy glass) to replace the damaged panel at a height of 4 meters.
In the video, the report with interviews with Stanasel and Vannucci
Dragons basketball however, on his Facebook page, he specifies some details on the breaking of the billboard, which emerged this morning during an inspection. Below is the complete post of the basketball company.
“It is useless to argue about who is to blame for a fact that, as already said, will bring to mind this recent 18 May 2022, one of the saddest pages of Pallacanestro 2000 Prato. Unfortunately it is not just a problem of the impossibility of keeping all the equipment for changing the crystal that is part of the backboard of a basket inside an old school gym, because even if there had been this equipment, as ascertained this morning in the inspection of the technicians who intervened for the substitution, the race could not have been played in the same way. The shattering of the crystal depended on the breaking of the metal structure that supports the basket and the crystal (SEE PHOTO). Even if the club had managed to replace the crystal, the new one would have broken at the first ascent.
Unfortunately this structure, the only gym approved for the C Gold competition, is now more than 40 years old !!!
At this point, those in charge must decide what they want to do with sport in Prato because the managers (volunteers, let’s not forget it!) Of the over 200 city societies, are no longer satisfied with the medal and the pat on the back, they WANT EQUAL DIGNITY with other activities such as volunteering, culture, etc. because they think they deserve it for their commitment and for the conviction of the social value of sport, especially the basic one, in the healthy physical and behavioral growth of young people. Aid to the productive and tourist activities of the city is also important. And what about the refreshment to the over 2000 young instructors, who, contenting themselves with a very small reimbursement, still give relief to families, relieving them as they say in Prato, “for their vices”.
At this point the Administration must really decide what it wants to invest in what I think is a patrimony that few other cities possess and that it would be shameful to disperse ”.
