Once upon a time there was Canottieri Milano. It is still there and above all it will be there because there are many projects. It has been there for 135 years, demonstrating what sport is, what practicing sport is in a city like Milan, which creates a culture of sport, which gives its support to generations of rowers but in reality not only to them. Last Friday he celebrated his achievement by bringing together athletes, members and friends on the Naviglio Grande towpath. «Canottieri is a place that breathes memory but lives in the present and looks forward – underlined president Stefano Rossi – For more than a century and a half we have accompanied the sporting history of this city, with an eye always turned to what is to come. Rowing and looking forward to a future made of energy, inclusion and growth.” Words that find an echo in the frame of images of Arnaldo Chierichetti’s photographic exhibition inaugurated for the occasion: black and white and color intertwined to tell of rowing and strokes, baskets and races, smiles and victories that belong to generations of Milanese. It was 15 October 1890 when Guido Alessandro Bonnet, councilor of Forza e Coraggio, another association of historical and sporting importance in Milan, after having admired four Turin rowers of the «Caprera» performing in the Darsena di Porta Ticinese after a journey in a «Veneta four» from Turin to Milan, decided to create the Canottieri Milano. Years have passed but the spirit that moved the founders then remains, a trademark that defies time. And the venue itself, in the lines of the Art Nouveau style of the 1920s, is the unmistakable sign of a sports venue that has become one of the symbols of the city. Today it has 1600 members, of which 430 are young, with constant growth in the women’s sector. The declared objective is that of equality: 50% men and 50% women, as in the spirit of the Olympic Games which reached the equal goal in the last edition. At the 135th anniversary celebration there were prominent figures from the institutional and sporting world: from Claudio Maria Pedrazzini for CONI Lombardy to Federica Picchi undersecretary of sport for the Lombardy Region, to Claudia Giordani of CONI Milan together with representatives of other rowing clubs such as Canottieri Olona and San Cristoforo.
The ceremony was also an opportunity to look at new challenges. After the recent restyling of the Olympic swimming pool, carried out with energy efficiency criteria, the dream is now to equip the club with a second swimming pool and a new basketball hall. Projects that respond to the growing demand for sport, but above all to the desire to say “yes” to more and more people, strengthening the role of home of sport that Canottieri Milano has embodied for generations. Because as President Rossi repeated: «One hundred and thirty-five years of history are not a goal, but a new departure…”