ANCONA – “Return to the Olympics”. This is the title of the meeting that took place this morning, in the conference room at Coni Marche, with which the President of the Regional Committee, Fabio Luna, and his counterpart in the X Zone FIV Committee, Saimon Conti, wanted to greet the Formula Kite athlete from Pesaro, Riccardo Pianosi, who obtained qualification for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, crowning a journey studded with important medals. In addition to the Authorities, they have Filippo Baldassari and Michele Regolo, athletes from the Marche region, also took part in the greeting. blue respectively in Finn and Laser Standard (now ILCA7) in London 2012. The only three sailors in the region who had the honor of participating in a five-circle event, symbolically made official a sort of passing of the batonwhich underlines a new sporting excellence linked to the territory and the sea.
«In the growth of the Marche sports movement, both in terms of results and members, sailing has recorded a positive trend especially in the last decade – underlines Luna – Sports culture is a central development factor for our Region which in Paris could see a delegation with record numbers, considering the athletes, technicians, managers and other professionals of the sports system” And not only that. «According to Istat data referring to 2022, the Marche is one of the best Italian regions for the ratio between the number of clubs and members in proportion to the inhabitants. Furthermore – concludes Luna – in the last 8 Olympic events our region has seen 3 compatriots as standard bearers, a great honour”,
“The qualification was very demanding, it came from years of hard work, but the wait is very exciting and, to tell the truth, I can’t wait to get started”, the enthusiasm of the young Pianosi, 20 years still to go accomplish, today working for the Sailing Section of the Navy but raised in the nursery of the Portocivitanova Sailing Club, like Regolo and Baldassari themselves.
«I hope you arrive at the start signal for the regattas with the same light heart but also with that concentration, which is essential for bringing home an important result. If managed well, the pressure we feel makes us do great things”, Regolo’s advice for Pianosi. Filippo Baldassari is of the same opinion, recommending him to keep his head free from harmful thoughts, to enjoy the calm that is always needed in crucial moments.
Behind the Olympic pass awarded by Pianosi there are also years of work by managers and sports clubs. This is the case of the Portocivitanova Sailing Club, which in 2012 was the first to create a division dedicated to kiting, when it was not yet a discipline recognized by the world federation. «Only 4 years passed from Riccardo’s competitive debut to his ticket to Paris – says Cristiana Mazzaferro, President of CVP – intense years and large investments which repaid a winning intuition on our part. In addition to Riccardo’s exploits, our partnership remains a point of reference also in the preparation of athletes in the Optimist and ILCA classes and in helping them reach the top of altitude and one design competitions.”
Great satisfaction was also expressed, at the end of the event, by Saimon Conti who repeatedly underlined the difficulties encountered in raising funds to support the preparation of athletes in an emerging discipline such as kiting: «It’s not just sailing, but the whole sport to make the Marche great. The professionalism and skills of the managers of the Marche sports clubs are a fundamental growth factor for sport and I hope that these figures have an increasingly greater weight within the institutions and bodies that promote sport and its values” .
