After the successes of 2025, the new projects of the leading association in handbike and wheelchair tennis. President Colombo: “Our commitment to around fifty athletes thanks to the support of entrepreneurs like Tommaso Ghirardi”
You have to imagine it as a path. At the beginning, there are people who are new to Paralympic activity. They have suffered a disabling accident, they find a place, some people, a challenge that allows them to recover an active life plan. Eventually, some of those people became Olympic medalists, or world titles. The others, however, found a way to go back to running, pedaling, sending a ball to the other side of the net. “Because our primary objective remains to recover the man first, then the athlete. Whether we do it through competitive or recreational sport or the various cultural projects we participate in, those who come to us find the spirit and physical efficiency necessary for complete social reintegration.”
Constant growth
Sixteen years ago, a reality like l’Active Team – then, we will find out how, became Active Team La Leonessa – didn’t exist. It was 2009 and “the sporting activity of disabled people was managed entirely by able-bodied people, who seemed to me to be exploiting them”. Who speaks is Marco Colombo, who that year founded the Active Sport association in Gussago, Franciacorta, a few steps from Brescia with Maurizio Antonini and Ivano Boriva. All three in wheelchairs. “I suffered a motorbike accident at the age of 24 – says Colombo -. It was 1992 and if there had already been an Active somewhere to support people like me I would probably have been able to get some more satisfaction from sport”. Colombo was a decent wheelchair tennis player – “I’m proud of my Italian team title“, he says –, and he is an excellent sports manager. “When Active was born in 2009, it had four athletes. Today there are about fifty of them, equally divided between wheelchair tennis and handbikes. But we also offer badminton and sailing, and we go to primary and secondary schools to propose our projects on inclusion and road safety.”
The help of the territory
A reality that has consolidated over the years also with the help of friends and supporters. “Honestly – recalls Colombo, who is the president of Active Sport –, all this would not have been possible without the economic support of a group of local entrepreneurs, I quote Tommaso Ghirardi and La Leonessa, the Camozzi Group and Mak. With Ghirardi, who also had the merit of bringing us Francesca Porcellato, one of our athletes for a long time, in 2026 we will celebrate ten years of collaboration. The handbike team led by Sergio Balduchelli, in fact, bears the name of his company. And it is a fundamental help, just think about the costs of the equipment: for a handbike it now costs 25 thousand euros, for a tandem no less than ten. Thanks to this help, for seventeen years now we have been giving all those who choose us the chance to race, even people who will never have a top career, but when we find one we try to give them sponsors and support. We are not a club that takes already established athletes. We only did it with Porcellato, because we knew it would make us make a leap in quality, giving us a vision of the sport and high-level preparation. But usually athletes establish themselves with us.”
World medals
It also happened with Mirko Testa and Lorenzo Andreoli, the two representatives of Active who won a medal at the last Para-cycling Road World Championships, which were held at the end of August in Belgium. Testa, from Bergamo, athlete of the Fiamme Oro, has been in a wheelchair since he was 21 years old due to an accident suffered in a motocross race, already world champion in 2023 in Glasgowa Paralympic silver and a bronze in Paris, two world championship bronzes this year, in the road event and in the team event. Andreoli, a former competitive skier, visually impaired since 2020, when, due to a meningioma in his head, his vision was irreparably compromised, he has been practicing paracycling for three years in Tandem category and with the Active Team La Leonessa shirt. Sixth in Paris in 2024, world champion this year with the guide Francesco Di Felice. “We are happy and proud to support them, they are two extraordinary guys – says President Colombo -. Testa, who grew up with us, managed to join the Fiamme Oro, for him a fundamental security, for us a source of pride. Andreoli joined the Paralympic project last year and we managed to support him until the World Championships in Belgium. As president, I hope with all my heart to be able to accompany and support them all the way to Los Angeles. But I hope that the entire Paralympic movement has greater visibility and support: they are kids who, with their exploits, inspire many, many ordinary people to start again thanks to their commitment to sport”. A few days ago, the whole Active team met for lunch in a restaurant in the Brescia area to celebrate the amazing 2025, but it’s already time to prepare for the next season, always with the same spirit: “there’s no going back”.
Worth a look
