VIDEO What is Para Sailing and why sailing really does belong to everyone

A day at sea with Punta Ala Para Sailing Team athletes aboard the little Hansa 303s. What did we learn? That sailing can be the ideal medium for breaking down barriers, dissolving the concept of normality

https://youtu.be/LJxJDFr9p_U Di Luca Sordelli
Foto e video MAYDAY Production Cominciamo dalla fine, al termine di un’intensa mattinata in acqua. Una lunga tavolata, Yacht Club di Punta Ala, una giornata ai primi di novembre ma dal clima settembrino. Davanti a noi solo la Troia, l’isolotto dello Sparviero, e un cielo limpido pulito dalla brezza di terra. Mi godo una bella chiacchiera, il cibo è buono e anche il vino. Si festeggia il compleanno di Genesio, il cinquantaduesimo, uno dei tre ragazzi del Team di Para Sailing con cui ho navigato. “Oggi è anche il mio comple-danno”. Dice, scherzando, Alessandra, a capotavola, in carrozzina. Esattamente tre fa anni il suo cavallo, racconta, è impazzito ed è caduta. Paraplegica, ha 22 anni e un gran bel sorriso. Oggi in acqua è stata la più “cattiva” di tutti, super competitiva, impossibile starle davanti. Il clima a tavola è allegro, anche se il tema non è proprio leggero. Mi raccontano le loro storie, hanno evidentemente voglia di farlo, complice il vino e forse anche una giornata insieme in mare.

Genesio is a carabiniere, now in the office but with three missions abroad behind him. “An accident, on a bicycle, two years ago. I was fished out by my hair…. ” at the table we laugh, because he has no hair at all. Genesio is quadriplegic, walks with crutches, has difficulty moving his arms. Of the three guys I sailed with today he is the one who last came to sailing, the least experienced, but even he, it only took a few edges done together to understand him, a super competitor.

The third is Giorgio, 53 years old from Vico Pisano. He amazed me today at sea; he has one arm but could handle the maneuvers of the Hansa 303 with impressive ease. Of the three he is the most experienced in racing, the one with the richest palmarès. He, too, tells me about the incident: ” On motorcycles, bad stuff, the loss of the arm actually at the time was the least serious thing to deal with…I also got fished out of my hair. But at least I have those… “. We laugh, the dig is for Genesio. Giorgio has always been a super sportsman, adrenaline activities such as enduro and downhill: ”

Sailing gave me those feelings again. I remember the first time I had to go out to sea: on our little boats, outside you could see the nice bad waves, the wind… Pure adrenaline. Desire to do, to live “.

On a level playing field…

But now let’s start again, how did I get to this table? At the Marina di Marina di Punta Ala together with the Yacht Club Punta Ala has been working for disabled sailors since 2011: in that year the Accessible Base was built in the harbor, inaugurated with Alex Zanardi and an indispensable starting point to be able to start any activity for para sailing courses. “A true accessible base,” Paolo Prearo and Alessandra Petri, the coaches who follow the kids, explain to me, ” means having not just simple slides, but floating docks at boat level so that the kids can board without problems, ramps to reach them and even the crane to help in boarding athletes with greater mobility problems. It starts with the first courses with INAIL and three boats, two HANSA 303s and a 2.4, five students. With the first boats and a suitable base, a virtuous process of growth can really be triggered; in 2019 the competitive team is born. As in any activity, however, the real success of projects always depends on the people, on those who really want to do and invest in social work. “Sailing is one of the very few sports,” Giorgio Pisani Vice President of IBSA Group tells us.

– that allows children with disabilities to compete on an equal footing with the able-bodied. This was one of the first factors that made us believe in this project. It all started from an idea of Lawyer Roberto Fusco, former director of the Marina, who is now gone, my high school classmate. I have been attending the Marina for a very long time and he was the one who had the vision.” It was IBSA Group that donated two Hansa 303s to the Punta Ala Marina, and from there a more mpio-level project began with the Italian Sailing Federation, to which IBSA gave three more Hansa 303s to be used in other clubs on the territory and creating the Para Sailing Academy in cooperation with CONI, Comitato Italiano Paralimpico (CIP) and World Sailing (the World Sailing Federation).

The international dimension, as Giorgio Pisani again explained, is crucial: “With IBSA on this front we are already active in France, Spain and Switzerland. The idea is to create a true European network. Now the total number of boats we have donated is eight. But the idea is to grow further and especially to create a big Hansa 303 event here in Punta Ala in 2025 .”

“Many of the young people with disabilities who started their activity here with simple sailingcourses,” Emanuele Sacripanti, secretary general of the Punta Ala Yacht Club, on the other hand, explains, ” are now racing at the federal level and in the high places of the Hansa 303 rankings in European and world championships. The ultimate goal of your now long commitment to this activity? “First of all to involve more and more young people, even those who are not able-bodied, in our activities. And then, in the long run, it would be important for sailing to re-enter the Paralympics. They have disappeared, but it is essential that they return. The dream is to see one of our boys or girls compete in that scenario “.

Equal but different

But back to the water. Early in the morning, with Ale, Giorgio and Genesio (also part of the Hanse 303 team are, Luca Iudice and Simone Mazzanti, Gianluca Raggi and Emiliano Giampietro race the RS Venture instead) there is a nice breeze around 10 knots from land, ideal conditions for sailing. I also get on a Hansa 303: first impression? Super fun. Agile, responsive thanks first of all to a deep, narrow rudder blade. The hardest part to assimilate to that you can’t use your body weight to improve righting, the first thing you learn to do on dinghies. In fact, the seat is fixed amidships, with the vertical “cloche” bar between the legs-this makes it easier to steer and “levels out” any differences in mobility between racers, which is also why racing with able-bodied people makes sense. The Hansa 303s, the name comes from the overall length 303 centimeters, can be carried alone or in two, maximum weight allowed 160 kilograms), sitting on either side of the rudder is this makes it much easier to approach sailing from the very first outings together with the instructor. The freeboard is then very low, you are very close to the water, the weighted centreboard (30 kg out of the 55 weight of the boat) however makes scuffing impossible, the boat at most fills with water and floats straight. Very high boom, both furling sails, only the three sheets to keep under control in addition to the rudder. In short, it only takes a little to get familiar with the craft right away…then the going gets tough. Ale and Giorgio go, they go great, and in practice between the buoys they stay ahead of everyone and are careful to give you space. Genesio is more novice, but the concentration is crazy. Then Ale’s dad, Alessandro, and I are there, having fun and quite a bit of it too…chasing.

Thinking big

The list of engagements for the Punta Ala Parasailing Team is quite busy, especially for Alessandra who has been selected, as a young athlete, to participate in February in the World Championships to be held in Sydney, Australia: “Throughout the winter we will do three trainings a month on weekends ,” Alessandra Petri, the coach,explains to me, “the whole team together, but in the otic to prepare Alessandra for such a challenging event. There are many appointments for everyone: in April in Brindisi, in May in La Spezia, then Ravenna and Desenzano to conclude with the Italian Olympic Classes Championships in October in Cagliari. A year ago, again at the CICO in Cagliari, there were 23 athletes engaged on the Hansa 303 in singles, and 12 in doubles in a class that is constantly expanding and that for disabled athletes represents the ideal first step toward competitive paravela, before moving on to more complex and more expensive classes and in management such as RS Venture and the 2.4mR. Precisely the latter is the class of choice for the Paralympics, at least it was. Sailing was a demonstration class at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics and then joined the medal sports at Sydney 2000 but then reappeared after the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in 2016 (and, for the record, the most medaled nations are Australia and Germany).

The reason for the exclusion? Beyond the unfathomable issues of international sports politics, sailing, while a perfect activity for disabled athletes, involves higher costs than most other sports and is also more difficult to communicate (primarily on television). Despite this, and despite the fact that there are no plans for its return for the next edition in Los Angeles in 2028, professional associations are working for its return to Brisbane 2032.

So, the sailboat is?

End of day. Boats are disarmed, lines are pulled. I had a lot of fun: just float, get in the boat in the boat, adjust the sails, heel, get away from the hard ground, and immediately it feels good. Even more so on a breezy day on flat seas in boats that are as simple to take as they are immediate in the feelings they convey. And, most importantly, among real athletes with a very high level of motivation. On this day I learned so much about a world I knew little about. What impressed me the most was the sense of brotherhood that one could feel: among the boys, with the coaches, in the circle. The ease with which they welcomed me and talked about, and joked about, their “faults.”
“Sailing,” Giorgio tells me, “is agreat thing.

Is a life stimulus, we feel normal. With the usual ability or disability we race, we have fun, we want to win “. Here, right here I think is the point: ability and disability get mixed up, blurred, and the concept of normalcy slowly disappears. That’s kind of what Alessandra reiterates: ” By sailing I feel free, I don’t need a wheelchair, we are all equal. And then here I feed my competitive sense, adrenaline the desire to do well. Sport saves your life “.

Genesius closes, remember? The newest, least experienced one: ” Here first of all we have fun, talk and understand each other. And then we do sports. The others spur me on, make me overcome more and more the fear that I still have a little bit by sailing. And then I have my goal…. “. Which one? “We are here to race and race-I want to make at least one podium.”