Winter sports again at the polls. After the very hard-fought vote to elect the regional president, with the success of Roberto Visentin, and that instead taken for granted at the provincial level, with Berto Sommavilla, the expectation is growing for the elective Fisi assembly, scheduled in Milan on Saturday 15 October.
For the first time, in fact, there are five candidates for the presidency of the winter sports federation: the current number one Flavio Roda, Stefano Maldifassi, Alessandro Falez, Angelo Dalpez and Giacomo Bisconti. There are also many who also propose themselves for a position on the council as lay people, athletes and technicians.
Among these are also three Venetian candidates as lay councilors, the Belluno Igor Ghedina (former president of the Cortina Ski club), the Paduan Stefano Umberto Longo (who gravitates in the Cortina environment of the Sci club 18 and is president of the Cortina 2026 Foundation), and Roberta Rodeghiero (president of US Asiago); and among the technical advisors Mauro Baldo (expert coach of the Drusciè Cortina Ski club), Luca Bertagnolli (former Trichiana ski club, currently registered with the Cortina 18 Ski club) and Carlo Dal Pozzo (Nordic ski technician).
The meetings with the ski clubs are continuing and tonight one of the presidential candidates, Alessandro Falez, will present his candidacy in Belluno, in the Regional College of Ski Instructors Veneto (in Piazza San Lucano di Borgo Pra) accompanied by the candidate councilor, and already outgoing councilor, Enzo Sima, former federal technician and ski manager. Presentations that Maldifassi and Biscionti have already held in the city in recent days and will soon be held by Dalpez. These are elections of particular significance, however, because the next four years will prepare the Cortina-Milan 2026 Olympics and for the Federation a delicate and particularly demanding period is expected.
The elective ordinary federal assembly has on the agenda the approval of the planning budgets of the Federal Council; but above all the election to central federal offices, from the president to 7 federal councilors representing the affiliates (with no less than three different kinds of representation); 2 advisers representing the Athletes (with equal representation of athletes and female athletes); an advisor representing the technicians; a President of the Board of Auditors.
However, there is no doubt that the central moment will be the election of the president after months of turbulence on the eligibility or otherwise of the outgoing president Flavio Roda, in office since 2012. Law 11 January 2018, number 8 amending the Legislative Decree 23 July 1999, number 242 on the subject of limits to the renewal of the mandates of the bodies of the Italian National Olympic Committee and of the National Sports Federations has, in fact, provided for a maximum limit of three “full four-year mandates”. A law that prevented, for example, Roberto Bortoluzzi from being re-nominated for Fisi Veneto.
Roda should also have made three mandates, the three candidates Falez, Dalpez and Maldifassi argue in their appeal. He replies, however, that the first assignment was only two years and therefore he should not be counted, so he believes he is still a candidate. The appeal has already been rejected in the first instance and on appeal by the Federal Court and now the judgment passes to the Coni Guarantee College, which could also decide, if it does not have the material time to analyze the appeal, to postpone the elections on Saturday 15. October.
Meanwhile, Roda says he is calm.
«We have a Statute and a Rof (federal organic regulation, ed) that speak for themselves and which obviously allow me to run as candidates. Then we leave the judgment to the ski clubs that have the task of choosing the top figures of the Federation. What I want to underline, however, while I am waiting for the judgment of the Coni Guarantee Board as you do, is that the Federal Court is an autonomous body, super partes, which does not depend, as someone maliciously wanted to believe, on the Federation ».
A controversy that will animate the last week of the election campaign and perhaps not only.