Paralympic and Olympic athletes also compete together. Disability is not visible on the firing line
The first among Paralympic sports. Archery boasts the distinction of being the sport that opened the events of what would become the largest sporting movement for athletes with disabilities in the world. It happened in 1948. The credit went to a visionary doctor of Jewish origins, Ludwig Guttmann, who from Austria had gone to England to escape the Nazi fury. At the rehabilitation center in Stoke Mandeville, not far from London, he had the great intuition to start doing sport and not just rehabilitation for the many soldiers who arrived with disabilities from the Second World War. In that year the Olympics were held in London and Guttmann invented an event with athletes in wheelchairs: 16 men and women competed in archery in what would have been the precursor to the Paralympics, today the second sporting event for number of athletes, nations and disciplines. This is why the importance of archery in the growth of the Paralympic movement is fundamental.
Differences
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There are none: Paralympic and Olympic athletes compete together and disabilities are not visible on the shooting line. It is the great beauty of archery, a precursor of that integration that other sports also have. It has been present at the Games since Rome 1960, in what are considered the first true Paralympics in history. But athletes with disabilities participated in the Olympics without problems. In this, Italy has a record: the first athlete in the world to participate in the Olympics and Paralympics in the same edition of the Games was the Italian Paola Fantato, who achieved a double in Atlanta ’96. Veronese, polio patient, is an Italian pride in the world. In the international field, few know that one of the greatest athletes of all time, the great marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who won gold in Rome barefoot, was a wheelchair archery champion after his car accident which made him paraplegic.
Italia
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This importance also applies to Italy. Blue archery has had and continues to have very happy seasons, thanks to the attention that Fitarco has always shown. Thanks to the commitment of the Federation, the great Italian champions who brought prestige to Italy on platforms without differences followed in Paola Fantato’s wake. Like Oscar De Pellegrin, the Italian standard bearer par excellence, always present at the Games, dividing his time between rifle and bow, from Barcelona ’92 to London 2012, where he sublimated his participation with a fantastic gold after being the standard-bearer of that edition. Now he is one of the most popular sports managers, as well as being a symbol of Italian sport.
Protagonists
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The tradition of the great Paralympic archery champions does not stop. Among others, there is Elisabetta Mijno, from Piedmont, paraplegic since she was a child due to a road accident, whose international star has shone for a decade: individual silver at the Olympic arch in London 2012, mixed team bronze with Roberto Airoldi, mixed team world champion with Stefano Travisani in 2017, with whom he won silver at last year’s world championship in Holland, where he obtained the pass to Tokyo. She graduated in medicine, she works at the CTO in Turin. She is a great champion who knows how to stand out and exalt herself even in her professional field. Sport also brought him love: she is engaged to the European Compound champion Matteo Bonacina, one of the three Italians from the compound who live in Bergamo. With him, the other great athletes from Bergamo are Alberto Simonelli and Paolo Cancelli (both working in Bergamo as volunteers during the lockdown), 2017 world champions and 2018 European champions. Asia Pellizzari is a young Venetian athlete in the W1 category. You came close to qualifying for Tokyo at the last world championships and with the postponement of the Games you can try to make the big leap again. Maria Andrea Virgilio from Palermo, compound open division, is another young woman who is growing with results, author of excellent seasons, always knowing how to improve. She had the indoor world record for 60 arrows, which was then surpassed last December by a Brazilian at the Rome Archery Trophy, and she won the mixed team bronze with Alberto Simonelli at the World Championships in Holland, obtaining the pass to Tokyo. At the 2019 Italian championships you won the Indoor Para-Archery gold, setting the world record with 578 points on 60 arrows. You won gold at the outdoor Paralympic Tricolors in Florence and gold at the Italian Championships in Lignano Sabbiadoro, competing with athletes without disabilities.
Tokyo
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Italy already has 7 passes out of 10 for the next Japanese Paralympics and the goal is to qualify 2 W1s to compete in the individual and mixed team in Japan. The postponement of the Games due to the pandemic does not change the Italians’ expectations, with Italy remaining one of the most eagerly awaited nations at the Paralympic events with the aim of reaching at least one podium for the tenth consecutive time
August 7 – 1.27pm
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2020-08-07 07:00:00
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