FROM THE SENT TO DESIO. Alone, face drawn and telephone in hand, Emanuela Maccarani yesterday morning was leaning against the counter of the large and desolate atrium of the International Academy of Rhythmic Gymnastics in Desio, province of Monza and Brianza. You never happen to see her there. Her place is always, always, on the platform. The lights in the gym are off, you can’t hear the music for eight hours or more a day, six days a week, marking the training sessions of the Butterflies. Until yesterday afternoon, her “hers” Butterflies. The ordinary and unassailable discipline of the national rhythmic gymnastics team is upset by the stories told to newspapers and televisions by the former athletes: the obligation to respect an obsessive and incorrect diet, humiliations, laxatives. Eating disorders, fear. “A sea of shit is coming upon us.” He mimics the gesture, a circle above her head, just as he has been doing all his life sketching the movements that the girls must then study in the gym. She doesn’t want to argue with the accusations, she shakes her head. “Seeing those things written in the newspapers hurts me. But I will not give an interview to a newspaper, to any newspaper. There will be news, things will come ». What, what things? “A press conference, perhaps. I still don’t know what I’m going to do. And then the prosecutor investigates, right? We will see. Enough, I don’t say anything more ». Closed doors.
In his place, and not in his defense, the Federation speaks. In the late afternoon the president of the FGI Gherardo Tecchi with an urgent resolution orders the commissioner of the Academy of Desio. The commissioner will be the deputy vice president of the Federation Valter Peroni. Once a week there will be “a check by a service officer in charge of collecting any anomalous facts from the gymnasts”.
In the abuses told by the former butterflies, the protagonists are sometimes the assistants, other times the coaches. But at the head of all, of everything, for more than twenty years she has been there. Emanuela Maccarani received the position of head coach of the National Rhythmic Team in 1996. Her is an extraordinary career. Nobody like her. Her first medals arrive after a couple of years, at the European championships. Even more on her, the Olympic silver medal in Athens in 2004. The gold medal at the world championships in Baku, blown to her eternal rival, Russia. Olympics, World Championships, Europeans and World Cups: she is the most medal-winning Italian coach ever.
Admired, envied: the whole world would like to steal from the Butterflies the imagination, the inspiration, the originality of its award-winning exercises. So much so that there was talk of the extraordinary compensation offered to her – and refused with pride – by other countries for having a Maccarani-branded exercise. And now? Nobody enters and nobody from that imposing building so desired and wanted by her. «This place is another medal of the blue, it counts as a medal – she said at the inauguration -. Butterflies finally have a home ». But yesterday morning, it will also be the fault of a tristanzuola mist or the large, empty and uncultivated park that surrounds it, the Academy seemed more than a goal to be proud of a large lost ship. On board there remains only an undisputed captain who if she really does not sink, she is certainly sailing in very bad waters.
The complaints of former gymnasts do not come only from former butterflies. There are dozens and dozens, many come from Lombardy. In addition to the Marche region, where the new world champion Sofia Raffaeli trains with the former Italian champion Julieta Cantalupi, this is where the best talents are cultivated. Up here almost all the villages – Desio, but also Senago, Lissone, Monza, Rho, Muggiò – host a young and fierce team. More and more good, more and more trained. The results improve, the sacrifices are greater. Thus in recent years many small technical centers have been born. Even if the gymnasts are not all potential blue, they are all aspiring blue: the Academy is the dream, the maximum goal to be achieved. And for dozens and dozens of girls and girls, everyday life becomes eight hours a day in the gym, evening schools, weeks and sometimes months away from home. So it is legitimate to ask: for how many of them is the scale a torture, the weight an obsession? If they do it, the most talented, wonderful, then I’ll have to do it too, right? In the first bar that can be reached on foot from the Academy of Desio, we talk about rhythmic gymnastics as elsewhere we talk about football. Everyone knows, everyone has read. No one seems particularly surprised, indeed. “How thin I am, thinner and thinner,” she says. “But it’s not fair what you want the girls who do all that sport there to get fat,” retorts another. «Once I saw a little girl having lunch with four slices of apple and two, but two, of bresaola – mutters the bartender, who has been the same since 1996, as is Maccarani, the national team coach -. I’ll never forget it. I am sorry but no. This is no longer good ”.