My mailbox is flooded with government press releases on a daily basis, but one recently caught my attention.
At the end of September, Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet amended Italy’s constitution. They inserted a requirement to promote sports culture nationwide, through targeted policies and investments. No matter how unclear it sounded, the announcement almost knocked me off my chair. I dived into the new article, which read: “The Republic recognises the educational, social… value of the psychophysical wellbeing of sporting activity in all its forms.”
It all sounded a bit too reminiscent of fascism, and the sports campaign launched during Mussolini’s regime to train young boys, girls, students and sports professionals to the highest standards. For Mussolini, the athlete was an embodiment of Nietzsche’s idea of the “superman”, the individual who stands apart from others. He twisted a complex philosophical metaphor into a fascist hero.
It is also surprising to learn that it’s so easy to change the Italian constitution to promote sport, when it takes years to amend it for political reasons, for example to deliver more efficient institutions to keep the country functioning.
I must admit that sports culture in Italy is quite lacking at the moment. I went to school in Rome when I was a teenager, and from memory the weekly hour of physical education only entailed sitting out in the sun, smoking cigarettes, gossiping, flirting and talking to your gym teacher.
But when I attended Anglo-American schools abroad, sport was as important as English, maths or science. It was a subject that could land you a college scholarship. When I lived in Jakarta, we had a huge campus with football and rugby fields, a swimming pool, tennis court, basketball/volleyball courts, a hockey pitch, and so much more.
We had a sports day and we took part in varsity competitions across south-east Asia. If we wanted, we could also swim in the afternoons. Italian schools have no real gyms, or if they do they’re outdated, and the PE teachers tend to be old. We don’t have any serious sports education like they have in the US.
Italy’s swimming pools are another nasty affair. They tend to be in private ownership, with just a few run by town halls – and they are always unhygienic. I love swimming, but eventually I stopped going to our local pool. Every time I went I would find bundles of hair on the floor, dirty shoes stacked in the lockers, and mould everywhere.
When I lived in Brussels, the public swimming pool entrance fee was only €2 and inside everything was perfect and sleek. In fact, it was just like a private pool in Italy, except there you would spend up to €150 a month and only go twice a week.
I can’t blame Meloni for having thought about promoting our non-existent sports culture, but I wonder how she will do that without first upgrading the sports infrastructure. That will mean building more swimming pools and giving schools access to top-notch facilities.
The government’s high-sounding new sports manifesto wants to guarantee “sport for all and everyone” and to make physical activity an integral part of the “social immune defences” of the nation. It will also make an important contribution towards improving the quality of life of communities, starting with the most vulnerable citizens and most deprived neighbourhoods. There are still some parts of this country where people lack running water and electricity, and where they are plagued with dangerously unsanitary conditions. I guess that having a local gym might not be their top priority.
Meloni’s idea also flags up Italy’s need for new financial resources, both European and national, to make sure public policies increasingly include sport. I wonder how happy Germany and France would be to know that they will be paying for an upgrade of our smelly gyms and dirty swimming pools, now that EU fiscal rules are once again under scrutiny.
Silvia Marchetti is a Roman journalist specialising in culture and current affairs
