With the torrid heat of these days, in the dim light of a room otherwise flooded with sun, have a coffee with ice with Minà and let him tell the world through sport.
– Although post mortemRai, once a week on its digital channel, offers a collage of about 25′ of journalistic services by Gianni Minà on specific characters or themes. The glue is, of course, sport, a lens with which the Savoy journalist wanted to investigate customs, politics and society. The personalities who appear in front of him are real giants, they have auras that would have risked making anyone who appears in front of them an ordinary one, causing everything to fall into the banality due to reverence. The good Minà, on the other hand, albeit with respect and politeness, managed to enter the hearts of his interlocutors sentimentally, so much so that they saw him as the only possible counterpart with whom to open up even in moments that were not entirely appropriate (on the sidelines, in the changing rooms, in a break between sets);
– Those were complex years, those in which Minà moved as an envoy. Italy was still a country on the border between the two blocks and those who worked for the state broadcaster, now as then founded and managed on political balances, she had to dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee if she was to keep her job. This is how the mustachioed Piedmontese juggled when he interviewed Alì or Diego or Juantorena or Castro, on the sidelines of a boxing match, or Agnelli in the beating heart of Italian capitalism. Her political positions were known above all because she never hid or ill-concealed them. Yet his narrative ability is so refined that not even the parliamentary commission could move criticism. This emerges from every single episode. Minà was respected by anyone who was in front of his microphone: this was his greatest strength;
– The way of experiencing sport, like itself, has radically changed. Mina himself admitted it in the last period, and made no secret of how much all this disgusted him. The huge and obvious difference that immediately catches the eye of those who look at these stories is the management of the athlete on duty. There are no barriers made up of press officers, social media managers, prosecutors, agencies, etc. which, in fact, prevent direct reporting. Yet there is no mention of minor characters or athletes of less profitable so-called sports. Platini is interviewed in his bathrobe, Panatta between sets, Maradona in the stadium tunnel, Castro in the corridor of a building and even manages to interview De Niro and Leone just finished filming “Once upon a time in America” in the studio – a circumstance of incredible rarity and that only he could be allowed. The result is a direct and emotional story. The sportsman speaks with a warm mind, when tiredness makes him drop all diplomatic barriers and allows him to express the predominant feeling in that moment: anger, disappointment, frustration, joy. The idol returns to being human, with every facet of weakness. This does not devalue or diminish it but, on the other hand, allows us to live it fully;
– The questions that Minà prepares at first glance seem simple, immediate. Instead, they are simply designed to leave those who place themselves in front of them with the possibility of being able to express themselves in the way that suits them best. This puts the respondent at ease because it leaves him room to express himself in the way he prefers. Often the guests, in his introductions, correct him on some definitions. Not because Minà hadn’t centered the character before but, rather, because there was the will to tell her story in the round and, especially, because the questions weren’t agreed beforehand. It is enough to note the faces of those who are interviewed to understand it, especially those not in real time;
– It will be trivial and obvious, but that type of narrative in mainstream circuits has practically disappeared. Sport has become fictionalized and theatrical storytelling, a lot of rhetoric, a personal reconstruction of events. No more a direct confrontation with the protagonists or a trip to the places from which to tell it live. Everything has become post production. This is why Minà is missing, because a narrative path has gone with him, of which, perhaps, he was the last traveler.
Hi Francis