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The interview
The Casalese journalist and voice of Sky Sport
Nicholas Roger. Voice of athletics also on Sky Sport
by Andrea Mombello
When you read the book you will hear his voice. Nothing to worry about when it comes to sports stories, events that seem to have been written and explored by the encyclopaedic details of Casalese journalist Nicola Roggero, voice of Sky Sport, back in the bookstore, this time with athletics and its great characters. “Stories of athletics and the 20th century” (Add Editore) tells twenty parentheses that intertwine with well-known events of the Short Century, up to the brutal attack on Ukraine.
And then it is well known that Roggero and athletics are a sure combination: “My mum must have noticed my passion for athletics, so much so that she poured me out into the world on October 7, 1964, with perfect timing: three days later the Tokyo Olympics with the athletics competitions starting on the 14th”. Read and explore. “Stories of athletics and the 20th century” will be presented very soon in Casale.
Where does the need to tell these stories come from, inserting them in a specific historical-social context?
An idea that comes from the editor of Add, Stefano Delprete, who asked me a year ago if I were interested in writing a book on athletics, combining it with the civil and social aspect. Athletics is the most global sport because it is practiced most and therefore I have collected twenty stories that could interact with characters from the history of the twentieth century: from the beginning of the battles of the Native Americans to the current war in Ukraine.
It all starts with the story of Jim Thorpe.
He was a Native American who comes to social redemption through sporting results. Victories at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics triggered a reaction from Avery Brundage, future IOC president. Thorpe allegedly made money playing baseball, which was not conceivable at the time, and so his Olympic medals were stripped away. Thorpe himself led a battle to get them back. The story ends 30 years after his death when they were returned in 1983. Meanwhile Thorpe’s career had moved into baseball and football, also going through dark moments in drugs and alcohol. A failed social redemption and Native Americans were considered the last of the last.
What fascinates you about athletics, a universal sport?
Athletics, with its universal practicability, ensures that every individual is given a chance. A nice metaphor for civil society, which should apply more often. Every individual should be judged on the talent they have! And here is where nations like Jamaica or Ethiopia put themselves on a par with great Western powers. And then to win, you always have to beat over 200 countries in the world, that’s the beauty of it!
Athletics was one of the first activities to value women, but…
Athletics puts everyone on the same level, but many women have suffered inconceivable episodes, such as Hassiba Boulmerka, the Algerian middle distance runner, who was a victim of Islamic fundamentalism. She was not allowed to wear the classic uniform with T-shirt and shorts, she won the gold medal in Barcelona 1992, threatened with death by Islamic extremists, during her career she had to live abroad for a long time and be escorted to the stadiums. As well as the Tigerbelles, led by Ed Temple, the formidable women’s team of the black university of Tennesse State. In her forty-four years of activity, her athletes won twenty-three Olympic medals. Attending meetings in the United States and not knowing if they were allowed a place to sleep, they were forced to make endless journeys. They are stories of girls from the period of Rosa Parks, famous for not giving up her seat on the bus.
Would you have gone beyond twenty stories?
Two hundred stories would not have been enough… it is a book that goes beyond the simple sporting story, such as, for example, the discus thrower from East Germany, Wolfgang Schmidt, who is helped by West Germany’s opponents, a story worthy of a Spielberg-like script as in the “Bridge of spies”; there are romantic but difficult situations such as the love between gold medalist in shot put Fikotova and gold in hammer Connolly.
Events that intertwine like the high jump athletes immortalized in the only images that are present in the book.
Brumel and Fosbury, both linked by the conquest of Space. Brumel emerges when the Russians launch Gagarin and Fosbury recovers when the Americans land on the moon. Brumel is an extraordinary interpreter of the ventral style, Fosbury invents the backward jump, changing the discipline forever. Gagarin and Brumel were two likeable characters, authentic myths, models that could be exported all over the world. Brumel then had a motorcycle accident and was never able to compete again, supported by the American John Thomas, who was always defeated by the Russian. In 1968 Fosbury arrives and takes the place of Brumel, then the Soviets have a further flick of the tail with Vladimir Yashchenko and his ventral jump.
Turning to current events, the World Athletics Championships are about to begin in Budapest. What Italy will we see?
We can expect great things. Certainly from the high jump with Tamberi, then with the women’s long jump with Iapichino and from the walk with Stano, Fortunato and Palmisano… and then if Furlani proves to be more mature than his eighteen years, in the long jump and why not, maybe let’s recover Marcell Jacobs, the relays will still be able to do well… We will see many Azzurri in the final, they will do excellent things.
2023-08-06 23:46:40
#Histories #Athletics #20th #Century
