Fellows Book Online Version 2020

18 because, of course, leg prosthesis or wheelchairs cost a lot, like everywhere. If the government doesn’t help you in having these prosthesis, most of the Paralympic athletes couldn’t practice sport in Italy. So, with this nonprofit association that my parents created, the name is “Art4Sport.” You can go and check it out and you can give whatever you want for the association, you can come to every event you want, we are happy to be part of this world. What we are trying to do, of course, is to make these Paralympic athletes happy by having the “pieces” that they miss. The really important thing we understand is to go ahead and live through the sport. In most of the countries there’s not already the culture of Paralympic and in general the culture of disability. In Italy we’re lucky because we have so many great people, I’m in love with Alex Zanardi, I suppose you know who he is and he’s a great person and he was the pioneer of the Paralympic sport in Italy. The pioneer of the Paralympic Sport in the World was Oscar Pistorius, I think you know who he is and I was lucky because I met him when I was really young and he was the first Paralympic person that I met. He was the person who told me that I was able to be back in sport and then everything else happened to him and about him. Anyway, he was the pioneer of Paralympic Sport all around the world. Our task now is really try to teach people what Paralympic Sport is, how we can help people with disability to have prosthesis. The important thing is not for the people with disability as such but it is for the rest of the world, all these people that are called “normal”, with “normal body,” with the “average body.” It’s really difficult to try to teach these people what disability is and how it works. I think that sport has the power of communication and I suppose that you believe that , giving one’s effort for what we do, finding our passion through sport and being back in life through sport. I think it is the most important thing ever. That’s why I’m doing it, that’s why we created the nonprofit association, we created it 11 years ago and now we have 40 people from 3 years old to 30 years old. All of them are without some “pieces”, some legs, some arms and all. We are trying to help them to be back in sport by giving them the prosthesis they need. We are doing so many events in Italy and we have started to do other events around the world using sport as the main topic to unify these two worlds, the Olympic and the Paralympic worlds, and I think it’s going in a really good direction. In Italy we’re so lucky because of what we have done so far. I’m part of the Italian Fencing Federation and this Federation, in the beginning, was divided into two Federations, one was the Paralympic Fencing Federation and the other one was the Olympic Fencing Federation. In 2012 before the Paralympic Games of London 2012 which was the really big change in the Paralympic Sport, because it was the first really amazing Paralympic Games. In Italy we unified the two Federations, the Olympic and the Paralympic Fencing Federations. What changed? We had the same budget, the same staff; all the physiotherapists, the doctors, the coaches, everyone. What we saw was as a result, was that the Paralympic sector had a much higher level, the sport was much better. The team achieved so many medals either during the year in all the competitions, or during the Paralympic Games at Rio de Janeiro and now we are looking forward to the Paralympic Games in Tokyo 2020. But our deep task at the moment is trying to teach unification. We gave a name to this kind