Athletes but especially soldiers, friends but more than anything else special people or, as defined by General CC Adelmo Lusi - head of the V SMD Department and president of the Paralympic Defense Sports Group - super-skilled. The thirty sportsmen, 28 men and two women, from the GSPD who met in Rome for the first technical meeting of the 2016.
The combination of sport and disability is a theme that the Italian defense has been watching very carefully for some time. To inspire this interest, the certainty that disability finds an indispensable ally in sport: an ally not only for physical recovery, but also psychological and social. For this reason and based on a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Defense and the Italian Paralympic Committee (CIP), the 2014 is the birth of the Paralympic Defense Sports Group, which brings together soldiers from the four Italian Armed Forces with disabilities, allowing them to train continuously and participate in dedicated sports competitions, of national and international relief. Italy is also the only country that allows military personnel who have contracted such disabilities to remain in active service, in the Role of Honor, and therefore still be part of the great family of the Armed Forces.
"The aOther countries have implemented only a short-term sports program - says Lieutenant Colonel Marco Iannuzzi - we aim at building a family, a true, heterogeneous and long-lasting group, regardless of the sporting result. There is a need to spread the culture of disability and to make public opinion understand that there is a disabled military and that the same is "lent" to sport for a series of activities that go far beyond competition. We want to be promoters of a new message, which speaks of integration and recovery ".
In the Rally, as in the Group, sport "comes after”As Domenico Russo also tells us, major caporal of the Army. The event is in fact experienced by the athletes as a moment of sharing and charge: we know each other and we compare ourselves, everyone brings his own story and makes the others his own, he becomes a team and the beauty of being together transpires peaceful and positive atmosphere that reigns.
Pellegrina Caputo, cms EI, is also part of the GSPD. They told her to be patient and maybe they were right. With the desire that distinguishes her, she came to win a silver in the launch of the weight at the 6th edition of the World Military Games in Korea. "I practice this sport because it is well suited to my prosthesis, but I would like to try others like the javelin throw. Sport is important and I appreciated its value being in the Group; helps you overcome the difficulties of life and not make you feel different. I am not disabled, disabled is who sees me as such ".
It is always Russo who tells us what it feels like to win a medal. It was the 11 September of the 2014 when at the Invictus Games in London, in the 100 mt race and against an American, he won gold. "Returning to service in the 2013, after thirteen years of leave, was my first victory. This was joined by joining the Sports Group, and therefore representing Italy as an athlete, and then winning the medal in London: a real exploit".
"When in 2014 we went to London for the first edition of Invictus Games - says Lieutenant Colonel Marco Iannuzzi - we were in 13 and without great expectations. We returned home with 5 medals. In May we will go to Orlando, Florida, for the second edition: we know we have become a little bit better and have grown numerically, now we are 19 ".
A passage from William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus", from which the name of the competition originates, reads "No matter how narrow the passage is, how full of punishment life, I am the master of my destiny, I am the captain of my soul". Sport has given our military a second chance, a different way of representing and serving Italy and we are sure they will do well!
