Ten stories to restore balance: Rivals, edited by UU, is a necessary reading to contextualize sportsmen in history.
– ‘Rivalries exist to feed story audiences, and conflict – we know – is the engine of storytelling‘. The quotation, contained in the Introduction of “Rivals – Legendary challenges that changed the sport“, published by Einaudi and included in the series Super ET Live OperaAnd summa perfect thread of all subsequent stories. Editors and collaborators of “The Last Man” decided, in 2022, to put on paper some of the rivalries that fueled the sports narrative of the twentieth century and the new millennium. Ten stories, ten different authors and authors, nine sports on which to focus (ten if we admit that men’s tennis and tennis belong to galaxies of parallel universes.Each one has its own peculiarities, both in terms of content and style, which make them autonomous, stand-alone, enjoyable even if separated from the others;
– After Marco D’Ottavi with long periods, the endless listings that force the reader not to be able to ‘compensate‘ and read the personal confrontation between Enzo Maiorca and Jacques Mayol breathless. Like the protagonists of the story, as if breathing in the same way could bring a man 100 meters deep closer to another sitting in an armchair. The exact opposite is the period of Emmanuel Atturo: short sentences, fast paced and anxiety-provoking dotted with decisions sudden, charged with that frantic trepidation which, with different explicit manifestations, has characterized the careers of John McEnroe e Björn Borg. Leaving more narrative space, both focusing on the biography and relying on the man’s words, is the expedient used Daniele Human to finally shine Joe Frazier. Blinded by the overwhelming physical and media figure of Muhammad AliFrazier has always been portrayed as a shadow of the reflected light of the late Cassius Clay;
– How distant can the conceptions of confrontation and confrontation be in the reality of human relationships? As narrated by Dario Saltariwhether it was decided to call it Thorpe, Cavic or Chad Le Closthe varied onomastics will never be able to determine the only rival that Michael Phelps has ever recognized as such, in addition to the watch and the stopwatch: himself. Other human beings, on the other hand, have to drink from the source of rivalry in order not to get dehydrated and lose their lifeblood: Alfred Jacob recognizes in the visceral need to Alain Prost e Ayrton Senna to enjoy the presence of others the gasoline that fueled the engine of their careers and their lives, a rivalry that lasted until death separated them. Sometimes, however, it is the outside world that perpetrates a prejudice that goes beyond competing for gold at the Olympics, to distance two personalities to the point of making one the embodiment of Good and the other ininconvenient Bad that, all in all, it would be better if it didn’t exist: Tommaso Giagni balances the forces at play, contextualizing the role that Justin Gatlin he held in the personal history of Usain Bolt and in scientific research applied to athletics in the 1910s;
– Women and men, men and women: Rivals it does not distinguish by sex, gender or affective inclinations. Margaret Smith Court instead it does: the co-presence with a figure on the opposite side like Billie Jean King it made their confrontation almost ethical. Elena Marinelli describes it like this, and we don’t think there could be a more fitting definition: “concrete example of dichotomies: omnipresence and gratitude collide with repression and disesteem“. The other pink signature of the collection is Tiziana Scalabrin: in the story of the rivalry (or presumed rivalry) between The perfect ten Of Nadia Comaneci and the perfect-but-less-iconic one of Nellie Kimthe presenter of Quiet Please it’s rigorously rigorous in bringing rigor back to a rivalry that never really happened between perfection and everything else that’s always been afraid of the perfect ten. Nellie Kim could have been a Korbut, an “X” or none. Wouldn’t change it zenith by Nadia Comăneci;
– The rivalry with which the story ends is indicative and ethereal in its own way. Because one of the two rivals expressly declares that he wants to slavishly imitate the other, follow and fill in the footsteps traced by the other. The relationship between Michael Jordan e Kobe Bryant is comparable, by word of the interested parties themselves, to that of two brothers: the veneration of the younger towards the older, Kobe’s desire to prove himself superior without ever being able to face him at the apex of the respective parables. The illustration on the cover by Stefano Marra gives further focus to the words of Dario Vismaralast in page order. End lines with ‘Rest in peace, my little brother‘ uttered by MJ at the funeral ceremony in Kobe was a heartbreak for which, despite everything, we have to thank the editorial staff of UU;
– No, we haven’t forgotten about Fabrizio Gabrielli. If possible, however, its pages on Maradona and Pele I am foreign. I’m a unique, differ from all the others: much more philosophical than technical, much more political than personal. Everything has already been written about them, it would be worth digressing if you do it with such mastery. They have never met, the parables have touched each other, in a team and not an individual context, with different roles, tasks and eras. What better opportunity to give free space to healthy rhetoric, rightly contained to the minimum terms when talking about others Rivals? All authors and authors have made an effort to put things in their right place, in giving credit to those who have been harmed by history. Even in painting dark areas of those who have always been illuminated by the most benevolent spotlights. For D10S e O King one cannot take sides. You can only love. ‘Repeat it with me three times: love, love, love‘.