MEALTIME. "AGAINST", TEN STORIES TO BE AMAZED BY SPORT AGAIN

BOOKS | 23/01/2025 | 08:14
di Marco Pastonesi

Today, "Against", ten small sports stories written by Paolo Patui and published by Bottega Errante Edizioni (16 pages, 17 euros) is released. This is my preface.


There's soccer, but also athletics, basketball, rowing, boxing, tennis, cycling, and even arm wrestling. There's Lupo, but also Spaccamontagne, Bruciaboschi, Lady Muscle, Barbablù, the Negro, and Chiquito-ten-and-praise. Gustavo Thoeni is mentioned, as well as James Dean and Tony Manero, Gigi Meroni and Gianfranco Zigoni, Larry Bird and Adriano Panatta, George Foreman and Piero Pelù. Tales of three-pointers and left hooks, but also of Aldo Moro and the Red Brigades, God and the Gospel, police and G8, Po and Tupamaros. It's about adolescence and consciousness, and therefore also about feelings and dreams, precipices and redemptions, complicity and friendships, that is, sports and life, sport as a life teacher, life as a sports theater. For example, in a Baraccone.


I thought sport had an insurmountable advantage over everything: that it didn't need fantasy or imagination, because in sport reality surpasses fantasy and imagination. As if behind a curve or inside a scrum, on the tennis net's wire or in a hawk's television eye, at the last shot or the last instant, everything could still happen, change everything, start over again. In sport, you dig and find. And you find gold, gems, diamonds. From manure, flowers and champions are born. Yayah Kallon, from Sierra Leone: fled from Kono, where he was born, to avoid being recruited as a child soldier, eight months to reach Libya, entrusting himself to a boat, first landing in Lampedusa and then, as a footballer, in Serie A. Serghei Vitali, from Moldavia's Falesti: arrives in Italy, enters a hellish circuit, ends up in prison, stays there sixteen years, learns rugby as a prisoner and embodies its values, until after serving his sentence he begins to play and coach, outside, free. And Martina Caironi, from Alzano Lombardo: at eighteen, while returning home on a scooter after a party, is hit by a car and has her left leg amputated, is reborn with a prosthesis, dedicates herself to athletics, transforms into an arrow, 60, 100 and 200 meters, long jump, result: three golds and four silvers at the Paralympics, six golds and two silvers at the World Championships, six golds and two silvers at the European Championships.

I continue to think that sport doesn't need fantasy or imagination. Everything is already inside. Just peel back a bark, which is often just laziness or distrust, and you find gold, gems, and diamonds. But Paolo Patui has shown that if you can't do more, you can however do something else. Emotions, circumstances, details, dialogues, dreams, defeats and comebacks, marginalizations and challenges, twists of fate. His "Against", ten small sports stories, is made like this. Hard and raw. True. Even in language. Like a three-pointer. Like a left hook.

I read the first, second, and third stories on the phone: I was dying of curiosity. The fourth, fifth, and sixth on the computer: sitting at my desk. The seventh, eighth, and ninth on A4 paper: I had them printed. I haven't read the tenth yet: I'm waiting to do so by sniffing the book, still fragrant with typography, with my eyes closed. To say that a book like this can be read anywhere: even waiting for the tram, even traveling by train, even in the locker room or living room, even in the bathroom, which, in terms of solitude and concentration, remains a privileged place. To say that a book like this can be read with the eyes, can be read aloud, can be read to a little girl or boy, can be made to be read by a girl or boy, can be read and reread until becoming friends with the protagonists, feeling their absence - placed on the bedside table - inventing another ending - placed on the shelf.


Copyright © TBW
COMMENTI
Hai dimenticato i tuoi dati, clicca qui.
Se non sei registrato clicca qui.
TBRADIO

00:00
00:00
Jonathan MILAN. 10 e lode. Gliela confezionano, poi però se la costruisce, se la guadagna e se la prende con lucida determinazione. Sa che è il giorno e non può rimandare a domani ciò che si può prendere oggi. Groves...


Milan vince al Tour dopo sei anni, Longo Borghini in rosa al Giro: è il giorno dei campioni italiani. Il corridore friulano ha vinto oggi l’ottava tappa della Grande Boucle, da Saint-Méen-le-Grand a Laval Espace Mayenne (171, 4 km), riportando...


Dal Vincenzo Nibali della penultima tappa del 2019 al Jonathan Milan dell'ottava tappa del 2025: spezzato il digiuno dell'Italia al Tour de France dopo quasi sei anni! Sotto gli occhi del Ministro dell'Interno francese Bruno Retailleau, il gigante friulano della...


Ci sono volute 114 tappe, dopo quella lunghissima salita vincente di Nibali nella penultima giornata del 2019 a Val Thorens, per rivedere un italiano vincere una tappa al Tour de France. Oggi Jonathan Milan è riuscito nell'impresa, conquistando l'ottava frazione...


Tappa e maglia per Isaac Del Toro sempre più padrone del Giro d'Austria. Terzo successo di fila per il messicano della UAE Team Emirates-XRG che nella Innsbruck-Kuhtai non ha problemi a regolare l'irlandese Archie Ryan (EF Education-EasyPost), secondo a 4",...


Era la tappa più attesa da tutti ed oggi Elisa Longo Borghini ha confezionato una vera e propria impresa ribaltando il Giro e prendendo la maglia rosa. Non è arrivata la vittoria, strappata via da Sarah Gigante, la più forte...


L'austriaco Michael Hettegger, classe 2008, ha vinto il Gran Premio FWR Baron Cima Monte Grappa per juniores con partenza da San Martino di Lupari nel Padovano. Il campione austriaco su strada e della montagna ha preceduto Andrea Cobalchini del Gottardo...


Una vittoria fortemente voluta ad ogni costo quella ottenuta dalla Biesse Carrera Premac nell’edizione n. 84 del Giro delle Due Province a Marciana di Cascina in provincia di Pisa, una classica la cui prima edizione porta la data del...


A quasi tre anni di digiuno dalla sua ultima vittoria con gli juniores (Clusone, 14 agosto 2022) Dario Igor Belletta ritrova la via del successo. Il milanese della Solme Olmo ha conquistato infatti la classica ungherese Visegrad 4 Kerekparverseny (1.2)...


Terza vittoria stagionale per Emanuele Matteo Patruno che centra il bersaglio nella gara unica di Castelnuvo di Asola, nel Mantovano, valida per il Memorial Nerino Donini organizzata dal Pedale Castelnovese di patron Renato Moreni. Patruno 14enne varesino di Gemonio,...


TBRADIO

-

00:00
00:00





DIGITAL EDITION
Prima Pagina Edizioni s.r.l. - Via Inama 7 - 20133 Milano - P.I. 11980460155




Editoriale Rapporti & Relazioni Gatti & Misfatti I Dubbi Scripta Manent Fisco così per Sport L'Ora del Pasto Le Storie del Figio ZEROSBATTI Capitani Coraggiosi La Vuelta 2024