While this system has attracted some criticism for \u201cmilitarising\u201d sport, it has nevertheless proved very successful. Athletes can receive a salary, training support and a degree of financial stability long before they become famous enough to attract commercial sponsorship. Crucially, they do not have to choose between pursuing an athletic career and simply making ends meet.<\/p>\n
Second, Italian families<\/a> play a crucial role as the primary financial, material and logistical supporters of young athletes. At the grassroots level, local athletics programmes<\/a> \u2013 often led by former professionals or passionate coaches \u2013 are equally important in identifying and nurturing talent.<\/p>\n There is, however, a third important factor that becomes clear when looking at Italy\u2019s medal winners. Five of its ten gold medals were won by athletes from diverse ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the so-called \u201csecond generation\u201d: the children of immigrants who were born or grew up in Italy and who now make the difference in sport. Nadia Battocletti<\/a>, the queen of European distance running on the track, has Moroccan heritage through her mother. Larissa Iapichino<\/a>, the long-jump gold medallist at the European championships held in Birmingham, is the daughter of the British-Jamaican long jumper Fiona May.<\/p>\n Marcell Jacobs<\/a>, the 2020 Olympic champion in the 100 metres and European record-holder at this distance, has an African-American father. And in swimming, the stellar example is 19-year-old world record-holder<\/a> Sara Curtis<\/a>.<\/p>\n In short, Italy\u2019s position in European sport owes a great deal to those I call \u201cnew Italians\u201d<\/a>. The great paradox, however, is that while Italy enthusiastically celebrates its diverse champions in the sporting arena, many of these new Italians experience discrimination in everyday life. <\/p>\n As I show in my research<\/a>, some Italians still express surprise when they hear someone speaking like them, but not looking like them. The Italian national imagination<\/a>, much like the country\u2019s citizenship law<\/a>, remains strongly shaped by the principle of ius sanguinis<\/em>, or descent by blood. This reinforces the idea of an racial core of Italianness that is implicitly associated with whiteness. <\/p>\n As a result, however Italian these children of migrants sound, behave or feel, their national belonging can still be questioned by a society in which anti-immigration attitudes and racist incidents<\/a> remain significant and affect successful athletes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Given this context, it is not surprising that over the last few years Italy\u2019s political scene has also shifted to the right. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s political roots are in the post-fascist right<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is particularly significant that Italy\u2019s fastest-growing political party, Futuro Nazionale<\/a>, is led by former general Roberto Vannacci. He claimed in a 2023 book that professional volleyball player Paola Egonu\u2019s \u201cfacial features\u201d cannot represent Italianness<\/a>. Futuro Nazionale\u2019s surge means it has a real chance of stealing support from members of Meloni\u2019s conservative coalition in next year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n This is not an isolated comment, but reflects a wider and recurring issue. Racism in Italian sport also affects the country\u2019s football<\/a>. Black Italian footballers have repeatedly lamented racist episodes they have experienced on the pitch, prompting the Italian Football Federation to renew its commitment<\/a> to combating all forms of discrimination.<\/p>\n While Italy waits for the resurrection of its football team, its new generation of champions in athletics and beyond is transforming the country\u2019s sporting fortunes. But these new sporting heroes are also prompting wider debate about what it means to be Italian in an increasingly diverse society.<\/p>\n Marco Antonsich receives funding from British Academy\/Leverhulme <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the second time in a row, Italy has topped the medal table at the European Athletics Championships. With a total of 22 medals (ten of them gold) Italy pipped host nation Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the top spot. Once a nation of footballers \u2013 having won the World Cup four times \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The \u2018new Italians\u2019<\/h2>\n
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