The Olympic champion from Sappada harshly criticizes the Fisi leaders for sending the two top athletes of the National team to train elsewhere
BELLUNO. Silvio Fauner does not fit and does not send them to say. The gold medal of Lillehammer 1994, in that unforgettable sprint with Bjorn Daehlie, did not take at all well the agreement signed in recent hours by the Italian winter sports federation and the Russian ski association (Russian ski federation), through which the leading Azzurri cross-country skiers Federico Pellegrino e Francesco De Fabiani they will join the international working group led by the German technician Markus Cramer and composed, in addition to the two Italians, also by four of the strongest Russian cross-country skiers in circulation: Gleb Retivych, Sergei Ustyugov, Artem Maltsev ed Evgeniy Belov.
“What do I think? I absolutely disagree », thunders the former Sappada cross-country skier, now in charge of the Carabinieri sports center for the biathlon sector, stationed in the Palus San Marco barracks in Auronzo.
What do you context about the choice made by the Italian winter sports federation?
“All. There is no reason to care. The objective of this decision, which is also heralded to the four winds, is to offer new impetus to the preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2022 but, to focus attention on a short-term event, in which the aim is evidently to winning something, all the long-term work has been thrown away. By granting the two top athletes to another federation, the team spirit and sense of family that has always been the winning weapon of Italy, and not just Italy, in winter sports is lost. Pellegrino and De Fabiani, however, are no longer even very young and for this reason they represent the tip of the iceberg if we look at the cross-country skiing movement. Removed from their midst, the young people who are approaching this discipline will lose the only two references on the track. I perfectly remember my first experiences in the senior national team, we are talking about 25, thirty years ago. I too had my references, two to be exact: Maurilio De Zolt and Marco Albarello. Following them closely in every workout made me a stimulus every day, thus allowing me to gain that decisive experience to get where I then arrived. I myself have been a guide for other young people, I am thinking of my fellow countryman Pietro Piller Cottrer. It is part of the team game, what led us to achieve unexpected results. Even France, which until ten years ago did not have a movement in the fund and which today boasts five of the best athletes in the world, after Obersdorf has given the merit of the victory to the sense of family where the grown-ups lead the young ».
In your opinion, will the decision adopted by Fisi affect the approach of the Italian cross-country team to the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics?
“Absolutely yes, as mentioned, the decision will have disastrous consequences for the entire movement, which is experiencing a period that is anything but flourishing, precisely in the long term. And for a long time I am thinking of the Olympics that will be held in five years’ time just a stone’s throw from our home. These are the right moments to start preparing the winning team of tomorrow, the new interesting recruits on which to base the hopes of success are there but if we take away from them the only two elements today able to make a difference to those who will lean on the inevitable path of growth? “.
You mentioned it and then the question becomes legitimate: what moment is the Italian fund experiencing?
“Worst ever, in the last four or five years we have plummeted to the bottom. The choice of turning the hopes of revenge elsewhere is, moreover, out of place because it means disavowing the work done up to now by Italian staff and technicians who, to be honest, are very good and prepared, certainly as much as foreigners if not more. Something else is missing, for example a vision that does not concern athletes and staff but who governs the control room. And here I stop ». –
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