Carlotta Ferlito, the former Italian gymnast who participated in two Olympics, has returned to talk about the physical and psychological violence she suffered during her years as an athlete. She did it in the living room of Silvia Toffanin, a guest at very true on Canale 5, where she revealed the bitter background of a glittering career (the young woman won, among other things, a silver in the beam specialty and a European team bronze). To reiterate a concept: «This sport cannot and must no longer be made up of psychological and physical violence». Like those experienced by herself in the past, for example: «I remember once when a slap flew during training. Luckily my parents have always been close to me and I thank them.”
The abuse
Abuse that leaves a mark even outside the gym: «When I confronted the outside world I felt less and less safe. From there I started not seeing myself anymore, not eating anymore. I only felt loved and appreciated when I was a gymnast and went to the Olympics. It was as if people no longer loved me.” Difficult moments that she has faced and, it seems, even overcome: now she appears confident and says she wants to «decide how, when and where my career begins and ends, to be autonomous, even uncomfortable if necessary, not to obey anyone. Every day I try to improve, just like I did in the past as an athlete, only today I do it as a person, as a woman. And this time I do it alone, without anyone who can decide for me what is right and what is wrong.”
The monologue
The former Azzurra had already touched on these themes some time ago, in her monologue broadcast during the programme Hyenas, on Italia 1. Occasion in which he declared: «No little girl should be slapped, humiliated if she asks to go to the bathroom, forced to do exercises where she risks her neck just as a punishment, or be called a “pig” for having dared to eat one more biscuit.” «We are very small when we start competing – he reiterated today, 28 April -. At my first Olympics I was 17 years old. When you are so small you don’t yet have the awareness, or the character, to react.”
The silence
And if episodes of this type have happened to everyone, Ferlito added that he had perceived a particular fury towards him after he started having friction with a coach. This resulted in physical but above all psychological abuse, such as some phrases that were repeated to her: “You are worth nothing.” Or: “You’re not doing this race because that other person is better than you.” At the time, however, she did not report out of “fear of being excluded”, given that at the time “there was a lot of silence” on the topic.
The case
A wall of silence broken in 2022, when the former athlete Nina Corradini denounced the mistreatment suffered by the Federginnastica coaches. A first complaint which was followed by many others, especially from the Butterflies of Desio: girls aged 8 to 22 who said they had ended up in a tunnel of abuse. Which ranged from body shaming to food deprivation, through discrimination and even beatings. The coach Emanuela Maccarani, one of the coaches accused of psychological abuse, left the sports court with a warning, and not a more severe measure, because according to the judges she would have “sinned affection” towards the young gymnast who reported.
