The die is cast: they will be Gianmarco Tamberi and Arianna Errigo the two flag-bearers of Italy at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Coni president Gianni Malagò announced the choice after the yes also received from the Council, who also revealed the reasons that led him to choose the Italian jumper and the blue foil player.
Malagò: “Tamberi is a true captain”
In recent weeks the President Malagò he was asked several times about the choice of the two Azzurri flag-bearers but the number 1 in Italian sport always played hide and seek, announcing that he wanted to reveal it only after the meeting with the Council and so it was: “I didn’t talk to anyone about the choice of the standard-bearer because I thought it was right and until the very end some considerations could change. I also received some very prestigious pressures”.
Malagò explains the decision to choose in this way Gianmarco Tamberi: “It’s an award to the boy and to Italian athletics, there were 36 of us who didn’t have an athletics standard-bearer. It was 1988 with Pietro Mennea. It is a prize not only for the athlete but also for the Federation. After the Olympics, Gianmarco continued to win everything. I saw how he was captain of the team that won the European Athletics Cup”.
Malagò closes the Sinner case
The Davis Cup victory and then the Australian Open victory also made rapid progress the candidacy of Jannik Sinner. However, a possibility that President Malagò has always rejected, focusing on the principle that those who have the honor of leading the Italian team in the opening ceremony should be athletes who have already won Olympic gold: “We talked about Sinner, we all hope that he can become number 1 very soon and that he can continue to win a lot. He gave the best answer when he said that the priority now was to focus on the tournament he will host in Paris. And we will all be happy one day that he can be a standard-bearer for the next Olympics”.
Errigo: an award for mothers/athletes
The other choice in the role of standard-bearer, with CONI having implemented the advice of the IOC with the role entrusted to both a man and a woman, fell on Arianna Errigo: “There you make a reasoning that goes automatically, even to exclusion – continues Malagò – It’s clear that Antonella Palmisano is penalized by the fact that we chose Gianmarco Tamberi, the same goes for the shooting girls after Jessica Rossi was standard bearer in the previous Olympics. There were two girls who are Federica Cesarini and Valentina Rodini who won gold in rowing at Tokyo 2020. But there was the problem that there are two of them. There is another athlete who would have had all the merits and it is Caterina Banti. She is the strongest sailor in the world but she is also part of a couple and she was the first to say that this speech could not concern just one person”.
“We also thought of Vanessa Ferrari – continues the CONI president – who had a legendary career but I didn’t want to deviate from the gold principle. So one person remained and this person is Arianna Errigo. Her palmares speaks for herself. It is a prize not only for the athlete and fencing, Arianna is the mother of two children who she often takes to World Cup competitions. And it is the best testimony to the principle that you can be a great athlete even with two children while remaining at the top. It’s a prize for top athletes who become mothers”.
