Bianchi, the basketball player who disappeared by choice: two days with a friend in Milan

From our correspondent Simone Battaggia

12 november
– Vignone (Vco)

He was in Milan with a friend for two days. He had left home on Monday night and Wednesday night, when he realized that his worlds were mobilizing, that someone among his family, friends and basketball people had already mourned him dead, so he returned home, to the villa. of his parents in Arezzano, a hamlet of Vignone above Verbania. At 11.30 pm Sebastiano Bianchi found his father Antonio, his mother Monica, gave breath to his brother Mattia, his companions and managers from Legnano and all those who love him. What he said, whether he laughed or cried or just shut up, we don’t know and that’s right. Yesterday he and his family remained closed at home, they saw no one but the closest relatives and the carabinieri, who from the capital went up to the villa – the Whites have been horticulturalists for generations – for a visit that would close the circle. Duty, because on Tuesday morning at 4, Mrs. Monica, alarmed by her son’s failure to return, had called the barracks. At the first light of dawn, a report of disappearance had been made, searches had been activated in the waters of Lake Maggiore, and even the crime of instigating suicide towards unknown persons had been hypothesized. Now that the happy ending has arrived we know that there is nothing criminal in the disappearance of Sebastiano. It is an exclusively family, personal story.

Medium

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Vignone is the village of Filippo Ganna, the fan club banner hanging at the entrance to the village leaves little room for doubt. And if Filippo is Top Ganna, the Olympic gold medalist, the track and road champion, the boy who gives a future to Italian cycling, Sebastiano is one of the many guys who live their sport as a midfielder and not as a center forward, as he sang. Ligabue. Twenty-nine years old, 197 centimeters by 110 kg, is what is called a category player. In Serie B it makes the difference, in A-2 it already struggles more. For his role – wing – he is missing a few centimeters. Those who know him, however, argue that basketball cannot be the reason that pushed him to give up everything on Monday night and disappear into thin air, leaving his car – a white BMW – on the Palatucci lakefront in Verbania to get on that of a friend – Josefine, a Frenchwoman – without taking her cell phone with her, which in fact she had reset the contents. Of course, on Sunday he had lost the derby against Sangiorgese, another team in which he had played. It seems that he left the locker room upset, without even taking a shower, but it certainly wasn’t a burning defeat that made him feel the need to disappear.

History

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Someone remembers that in another derby, between his Omegna and Domodossola, he broke his hand by throwing a punch on the bench’s plexiglass after the first half. Someone else explains that, in his wanderings between Serie B and A-2, between Cento and Tortona, between Urania Milano and Sangiorgese, he had already happened not to be found. Others whisper that having him on the team is an important choice, that he does strange things, that he has a shady character. But many also tell of his sensitivity, of the paintings – one would also contain a poignant dedication to Josefine -, of the film script he wrote, of family relationships that are not easy to manage, of a depression that comes and goes and that Monday night had made fear the worst to a mother and a father who a few hours later, while they were in the barracks by the carabinieri, had also had to emotionally manage the false news of the death of their son. Over the cooked, boiled water. “As I know him, Sebastiano is a great guy – Matteo Montano, his former partner at Urania cuts short -. We also went out together in Milan. I tried to call and write to him, but his phone was off. I’m more sorry about how the media dealt with it, how disappearance was confused with death. Of course, he too has difficult days, but who doesn’t? And then I know that in Legnano this year he is playing well “. Someone whispers that on Sunday Sebastiano saw a girl he didn’t think he saw and that the fact upset him, but who knows. What happened only he knows. And now it’s up to all the people who love him to make him understand that a happy ending can be sought every day.