Dear Director Feltri,
What idea was done of what happened in Singapore, where two athletes from the Italian National Swimming National Team have been accused of theft at the airport? Apparently, one of them would have hidden steps stolen in the friend’s bag. I confess that I was very impressed. What do you think about it?
Alessio Bianchi
Dear Alessio,
I think the story is shameful, even more so because it involves no two towns, but two young athletes who brought the word “Italy” to the chest and who, at least in theory, would have had to embody the highest values of sport: loyalty, discipline, respect, responsibility. Instead, apparently, they made themselves protagonists and I emphasize: apparently, because we await the definitive results of a miserable episode. If the facts have gone as it seems, we are faced not only to a theft, but to something even more subtle and disturbing: a girl would have found in her bag of stolen perfumes, and her colleague would have confessed to having put her, secretly, as shown by the videos of the video surveillance. Do you understand? A teammate that exposes the other to the risk of ending up in jail in Singapore, where they are not notoriously tender or democratic with prisoners. And I don’t tell me that it is naivety. This behavior is not only illegal, it is infamous, because it tries to download the responsibility for someone else in order to get away with it and bring home the maltolto.
In Italy there would have been the usual justificationism, the pietism, the lawyer on duty to tell us the “fragility” of the accused, the press intent on minimizing. In Singapore no. There is no room for scripted and you don’t joke. And Italy does not come out well, not even this time. Other than Italian excellence in the world: this is an international fool.
There is a detail that makes me particularly indignant. I read that someone complained about the searches that the girls were subjected to. But please! They are ridiculous accusations. At an airport, in a case of suspicious theft, it is obvious and sacrosanct that the police intervene, that he forgives that he verifies. Those who commit a crime cannot demand delicate delicacies, patriotic ink or save.
But no. As always, in Italy, the finger focuses on those who make their duty in this case the Singapore authorities and not against those who make mistakes. The girl who stole became a victim, while the police ended up on the defendants’ counter. It is the typical moral inversion of our time: the unworthy elevated to the model, the protected guilty, the manager responsible.
Those who have some hindsight know well that sport is not only medals and flash, but behaviors, style, example to inspire. In this story there is nothing exemplary. Just a sad page of unfair, individualism, cunning and cowardice.
This is not just a girl who made a mistake. It is one who, well aware of what he was doing, attempted to make his mistake pay for another. And it is one that, if the accusations are confirmed, does not represent Italy. It does not represent sport.
It represents nothing, except the moral decline of a generation bred in the belief that everything is allowed and that someone, in the end, will always save her skin. In this case, the Italian government.
I say enough. And I say above all that in Italy it would be appropriate to affirm an elementary principle that we buried: those who make mistakes pay.