The choice to build the artistic gymnastics Olympic training center in Brescia is technical and meritocratic, but this time politics has also come together as a team. A sort of Champions League (in the absence of football…) earned on the pitchwith the historic results obtained in a period that starts before Vanessa Ferrari and will continue even after her retirement in August, hopefully after the Paris Olympics, an event for which she is fighting strenuously with all her might. It all started with her, of course, but the seed in the Brixia household had been planted years before: nothing happens by chance. The structures, however, made the difference.
In 2006, Vanessa hit the pages of newspapers and news when she won the World Championship in Aarhus on her debut. And, above all, when she explains that she managed the miracle despite training in a non-regulatory gym. The phone calls from the Prime Minister Romano Prodi arrive, one year later PalAlgeco is ready for use: it was a temporary structure, but it is in the prefabricated building in via Petrarca that in these seventeen years the strongest women’s national team ever was born, whose record book still has many pages to write. The Brescia model worked, which became the Italy model, who in the meantime appointed Enrico Casella as technical director of the Italian team and then called him back to command operations after a short period of absence. All the most promising girls have moved to the city, some from Naples like Manila Esposito, who won four gold medals at the last European Championships and was born two weeks after Vanessa’s first world triumph.
Here lies the meaning of a choice and the success of a work chain, which demonstrates how this area can also become a company in sport and not just in industry. Without the results, the federation would not have chosen Brescia from around 80 applications received during the call for the Pnrr. And the Municipality did not hold back, it did its partinvesting in this center and even more in the indoor athletics hall – which runs on a parallel track – which will also be built in Sanpolino and whose work will start in a week. The city has known how to work as a team, like never before. Capable athletes, coaches and managers pulled the group together. Sport has paved the way, lThe politician took advantage of the opportunity to regenerate a neighborhood of the city. It is always up to the champions to show, both small and large, that spaces exist where there seem to be only walls. But to become champions you need a family: coaches are like parents, now they will have a bigger home to build tomorrow’s successes. They will be those from the whole city.
