Empowering Athletes: Paralympic Champions Shine at Exposanità 2024 in Bologna

Sport and disability, the Paralympic champions arrive in Bologna

At Exposanità 2024 (BolognaFiere 17-19 April) there is a packed calendar of disciplines in which athletes and Paralympic champions will compete

Insights

April 16, 2024
16 apr 2024

BOLOGNA – On the eve of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which will be held from 28 August to 8 September 2024, a packed calendar of disciplines in which Paralympic athletes and champions will compete is expected at Exposanità 2024 (BolognaFiere 17-19 April).
Starting with Dong Dong Paolo Camanni, Paralympic Judo champion, who with the bronze won at the Antalya Grand Prix on 4 April earned his pass to the Paris Summer Games. And again Emanuele Lambertini, athlete of the Parafencing National Team, silver at the European Paralympic Fencing Championships in Paris last March. There will also be Vincenzo Contemi, Parabadminton national team, Federico Mancarella from Bologna, Paracanoa national team, bronze medal in the KL2 200m at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics and gold at the European Canoe Championships in Montemor O-Velho, Portugal, and Loris Stradi, Italian paralympic national team golfer who, after a serious accident, resuscitation, long convalescence and rehabilitation in Cervia, discovered golf, a sport he began practicing in 1998.
Demonstration sessions of the various disciplines will be scheduled throughout the days of the event and each visitor will be able to test their motor and sporting qualities by trying their hand at one of the proposed activities, always under the supervision of expert sports technicians. In the stand of the Paralympic Committee there will be information points managed by the Federations, Paralympic Disciplines, Sports Promotion Bodies and Amateur Sports Associations/Societies.
Judo, climbing, mountain biking, archery, shooting, sport fishing, golf, table tennis, fencing, sports dance, sailing, swimming… are just some of the disciplines scheduled at Exposanità which has always dedicated space and attention to the world of sport as a vehicle for inclusion and promoter of equality. Inside the dedicated space, Horus, there will be a demonstration area reserved for sports disciplines in collaboration with the Italian Paralympic Committee – Emilia-Romagna Regional Committee. Over the course of the three days, visitors will be able to try their hands directly and watch a series of tournaments and animated competitions.
A full calendar of events where you can learn, become passionate and approach all the disciplines represented. There are numerous benefits on body, mind and mood that people with disabilities can derive from sport. Sport which in turn is also proposed as an important educational tool, allowing the needs of each person to be satisfied, from movement to the improvement of cognitive abilities, to reach the final goal of acquiring greater autonomy.
Sport for people with disabilities is also a challenge for research and innovation, as will be demonstrated by the seminar Sport as a technological incubator in prosthetic technique: towards the 2024 Paris Paralympics organized by Inail and scheduled for 19 April at 10am The creation of tailor-made devices for sporting activity, in fact, finds in the Paralympic Games an important showcase and a stimulus for the development of increasingly high-performance and inclusive prostheses. The seminar aims to take stock of the current situation: from the use of the most innovative technologies to the future challenges of research and experimentation in the sports prosthetic field, such as the “Olympia” project which sees the collaboration between the Inail Prosthetic Center and the University of Padua. Furthermore, the participation of Cip Emilia-Romagna and some athletes at national and international level is expected.
At Exposanità there will also be space for a project designed to encourage sporting activities for children and young people with disabilities practiced together with their able-bodied peers. This is the objective of All Inclusive Sport, an initiative born in 2016 in Reggio Emilia at the request of a group of families of children and young people with disabilities who asked for their children to practice sporting activities not in an environment exclusively created for disabilities . A seminar will be dedicated to All Inclusive Sport, and the results achieved over the years, during the Bologna event entitled “The experience of children with disabilities and families who take part in the All Inclusive Sport project: a qualitative study”. The event will be held on April 17th and is organized by Aito, the Italian Association of Occupational Therapists, which participated in the round table where the project was developed.
According to CONI data, approximately 26% of people with disabilities dedicate themselves to sporting activity: a practice that not only has therapeutic functions, but also promotes self-realization and inclusion. And in fact making sports clubs inclusive is precisely the objective of the Reggio Emilia project: this is thanks to the free collaboration of a supertutor who develops a sustainable and realistic ‘plan’ for both the athlete with disabilities and his teammates. Where necessary, a tutor supports the coach during training. The numbers are flattering: in the year 2023-24, 205 athletes were included among 3 thousand teammates and 100 sports associations were involved. “To draw a parallel – we read in the conclusions – we could say that the project is in direct continuity with what happens in the Italian school world, where inclusion represents one of the innovations of our system. This comparison with teammates and training allowed our male and female athletes to engage in an important comparison, in which they discovered the positive side of diversity, which they learned to accept, and faced experiences without the fear of making mistakes”.
Finally, Exposanità will once again be the opportunity to award the Lilac Flags, the recognition of the social cooperative of the same name which since 2012 has rewarded those Municipalities that are particularly attentive to tourism accessible to people with disabilities. It is estimated that accessible tourism already potentially concerns at least 10 million people in Italy (130 million in Europe) and is undoubtedly a growing segment, given the progressive aging of the population. Every person with a disability, before organizing any trip, must carry out “extra work” also known as “hidden labor of disability”. A typical example is the choice of hotel for the trip. While anyone needs just a few clicks to choose the hotel, for people with disabilities all this is preceded by endless emails to understand if the place is really accessible (a typical example is when the presence of an elevator is indicated but it is too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair). From here we understand the importance of ensuring that tourist locations are truly open to everyone. The award ceremony of the Lilac Flags for the two-year period 2022/23 is scheduled for 17 April at 5pm.

2024-04-16 14:05:13
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