Olympics, Mornati’s (CONI) warning: “There is a lack of connection between school and sport”

Olympics, Mornati’s (CONI) warning: “There is a lack of connection between school and sport”

Italy is back from a successful Olympic expedition. With the beauty of 40 medals in Paris 2024 equalled the record of Tokyo 2021, and with 12 golds against the 10 of the Japanese team the trend was even better. Talking with Italian Business The Secretary General of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) Carlo Mornati tells the story of the work carried out by the institution that coordinates Italian sport for this result but also raises an alarm: the sports culture must be spread everywhere, starting from schools, to prevent the federations’ results from being lost. Mornati, already silver rower in the coxless four at Sydney 2000, general secretary of CONI since 2018, talks about the prospects in this sense. The interview.

Mornati, an Olympics of record numbers. What story do the 40 Italian medals tell?

The numbers are the result of a positive trend that has lasted for ten years and, above all, of the work of the federations. The medals are an interesting indicator because they represent the tip of the iceberg. But behind them there is a huge amount of work. In Paris the discussion about the fourth and fifth places, respectively 20th and 27th at the end, was almost laughable. But it is statistically obvious that in an increasingly competitive movement, as the medals increase, positions of this type also grow.

We have seen a boom in activity of the Italian athletes in Paris in the fight for medals. What are the numbers of this process?

Compared to Tokyo, we went from 67 to 79 finals for our athletes. That was, in total, 404: an all-time record for the Italian team at the Olympics, which covers 3.8% of the athletes’ representation. A symbol, therefore, of a healthy movement. Of these 404 kids, 241 played finals: if for many athletes participating in an Olympics is already a success, many of ours don’t go just for that. And about a quarter of the athletes who played finals brought home medals.

All this in a wide variety of disciplines…

Of the 48 disciplines, Italy qualified in 38 and won a medal in 20. Italy has a transversal medal-winning movement that is the result of its horizontal organization. CONI is a sui generis organization: it is the confederation of federations that carries forward all the movements homogeneously. And this is reflected in the results. We are the only country, together with Germany, that manages to compensate and guarantee change where a centimeter, a thousandth or a thrust can make the difference. 20 medal-winning disciplines are a lot for our excellent sports craftsmanship.

Medals extol the excellence of athletes, trainers, and coaches. But they also push us to think about the difficulties overcome. What challenges do federations have to overcome?

Medals often hide problems. And the country has problems related to the world of sport, starting with those of practice: we are the second oldest state in the world, with fewer and fewer young people. I did my first Olympics in 1996: since then, 5 million young people have disappeared from the “Olympic” generation. And this is a problem that cannot be overcome, an evident impoverishment.

Could a stronger connection between sports and the world of school be a substitute?

It would be essential. But today we pay for the fact that we do not have a decisive process in the link with schools to bring young people closer to sport. We feel the need mainly by looking at the shortcomings of our team sports. In which the sports system often made up for it because the kids approached the practice on the street or in the oratories. Craftsmanship makes up for it, but it is localized. We become very strong in individual disciplines that are an expression of the geography of the country: taekwondo practiced in two towns in Puglia, fencing between Jesi and Livorno, rowing between a few cities in the South and some lakeside centers in the North. We work on a limited human capital by chiseling. But on other fronts we can and must improve.

Can Olympic successes help?

The Olympics have the function of awakening attention. Our people have a great passion for sport, which is counterbalanced by a low culture of sport practice because it has never been taught to them. Sport has never been played in school and the physical literacy that is done during class hours is certainly not a sport practice. Today we pay this price also because other institutions, such as the oratory, have scaled down compared to the past. Without going to disturb American colleges, it is like this everywhere: kids play basketball, volleyball, soccer already in elementary school in many states, from those of the former Yugoslavia to those of Western Europe. And compulsory school is the only container where all the young people are found almost simultaneously to intercept them.

What is CONI doing to address these problems?

CONI has existed for a hundred years and is squeezing the 100 thousand sports associations and the federations that are animated by them like a lemon. This is a system that should be the terminal, while the associations replace the shortcomings of the scholastic and educational world. Many projects that CONI works on are linked to the Olympic training centers promoted in alliance with the federations, moving to specialize an ultra-specialized and small human capital. In recent years, between Rome, Formia and Tirrenia, CONI has invested 40 million euros for multifunctional centers where the federations go on an almost permanent gathering to prepare for the Olympics and which operate as aggregation points for top-level sports. The Institute of Sports Medicine and Science, at the same time, provides ongoing support and actively contributes to supporting and sustaining the federations during and outside of competitions. In Paris, 7 engineers, 7 doctors and 7 trainers have worked continuously to provide surveys and match analysis operations, as well as immediate feedback on the topic of weather forecasts.

The next Winter Olympics will be in Italy. Could this be an opportunity to raise awareness on the topic of sports culture?

The Milan-Cortina project, on the sports front, is focused: it does not crystallize a Winter Olympics in a few territories but makes it an Italian event, covering the entire Alpine arc, from Cortina to Livigno. The institutions should support the hunger that is emerging and the passion to follow sports disciplines that remains active in the country. Now Italy has a Ministry of Sport, it has developed with Sport & Salute an entity for the promotion of sports culture. The goal will be to propose a winning model, regulated and functioning outside the cohesive sports system to expand the perimeter of the practice and remember, beyond the enthusiasm of a successful Olympics, the importance of sport for our daily lives and our system