Ai vostri posti
Il mondo, lo sport, le Olimpiadi. I campioni che hanno vinto e quelli che non ce l’hanno fatta
Valerio Piccioni, Gianni Bondini, Ivano Maiorella e Nicola Sbetti (Eds.)
Edizioni BookLab, 178 pagine a colori
The book can be requested at:
Ufficio stampa e comunicazione UISP, email: uisp@uisp.it tel.+ 39 06 43984305.
This book, published in 2016 Olympic year, contains biographies of about 50 champions of sport and humanity, They played a role in the sport history while not necessarily won the gold medal.
The Olympic year is an opportunity to re-read the Games through the lens of the social value of sport. Starting with the stories of champions who have won despite not having arrived first, women who made off in a historically male chauvinist, athletes and world symbol of the long March of rights, equal opportunities, anti-racism. “Here are the Pipers of this story: they are often the winners is inevitable but can sometimes also be the losers – writes in the opening of the book Valerio Piccioni, journalist – the readers have not to expect a single story, capable of saying anything at all. Rather, stories to discover or rediscover, that deserve to be told, helping us to understand the world.” The index of the book is very spread and divided into chapters evoking suggestions that they do read in one breath.
“War and peace” where we talk among more of the rivalry and friendship that did not like Hitler between American Owens and German Long, or the history of Zatopek between victories and Russian tanks, or that one of Black September and the Munich Olympics. “Losers or winners?” the Dorando Pietri’s story and the Games lost, to Ron Clarke, the Kenyan champion who was told he could never run. “Olympic challenges teachers of history” whenTito beats Stalin on a soccer field in 1952, the Hungarian war and water polo, the baseball match United States of America-Cuba at Olympic Games Atlanta.
These 13 chapters show how history, sport, society and culture constitute together an inseparable relationship. It’s a book for everyone, for those who love sports and want to understand its deeper meaning, beyond the current trends, but it is also a book for those who think that sport is a simple exercise, without understanding the value for the development of the human being. Finally, it’s a book where it’s showed that sport is an expression of the culture in which we are immersed and sometimes expressed, as in all forms of abuse which we know, the worst values of our society. For these reasons, sport needs to be defended, to spread its constructive role in the development of the culture where we live. “Ai vostri posti” provides precisely this contribution and the only regret is that it has not been found a wider diffusion as it deserves.
