“Stop for six continuous months and we do not know what will happen in May but I see it badly. Many managers of sports facilities will go bankrupt, the situation is dramatic”. Giorgio Lamberti, the first world gold medal in Italian swimming and recently returned to the attention of the news for his hospitalization in the sub-intensive ward after contracting Covid, says this to time.news. “Now I’m better -he lets you know-, but I take a walk and I’m out of breath. It will take me months to get out of it”.
Lamberti makes an appeal addressing directly to the new Undersecretary for Sport, Valentina Vezzali: “We are waiting for it to become operational, we know that it arrived in the race in the middle of a perfect storm, but knows sport like few people: we need functional proposals and not alms . An important sign would be to restore our dignity and to have the Revenue Agency recognize that the characteristic activity must be included in the count “. Otherwise “the two thousand euros are paid to Caritas: we have lost hundreds of thousands, either real help arrives or it is alms and we don’t need it”.
With the latest decree for reimbursements, Lamberti explains, a situation has been created that he defines as “humiliating. Once again, unless they correct the measure, the Agency would remove the ‘characteristic activity’ in the calculation of refreshments. that is, the revenues from subscriptions and season tickets. Which are the existential motivation of every sports club and represent 80-90% of the revenues of a company that runs a sports facility “.
Lamberti is now at the helm of a company that manages 4 swimming pools: “My first refreshment was 4,000, insignificant, it was enough only for toiletries. Today it would be even lower. So you feel frustrated, lost and humiliated, there reimbursement is denied simply by denying the very reason for our existence, that of sports centers that from before the cradle with courses prepared for old age and disability give the benefit of swimming to over 5 million Italians “. A slice of society, he stresses, “knows what psychophysical well-being is. Now, seeing us take away the part for which we exist as if we were companies that build objects is absurd. Here, in sports facilities, there is the origin of health of the person “.
“My structure alone has lost around 60% or more: 6-700 thousand euros and I speak exclusively of out-of-pocket expenses because management is firm – Lamberti continues -. There are groups that have lost millions. I manage just four structures, let alone those. large companies that manage up to 40. From the outside it is not clear that these plants are like small factories, they need constant care and maintenance, even if only starting from the water heating systems. And the bills continue to run, at the moment we have only acted as custodians of a patrimony that for the most part is endowed by the municipalities and therefore public patrimony “.
As a person who has entered the living aspect of the pandemic undergoing Covid on his own skin, Lamberti has no doubts: “I have seen things I never wanted to see, suffering and terror, everything. I am well aware that health must be safeguarded. But after a year to see that the government still does not have a clear idea of the real needs of certain worlds, such as theaters or other personal services, is humiliating “, he repeats. “We have already been humiliated by Conte when he told us last year that the sports world had to get back in line: we, who have always been the most attentive to hygiene. Not from today the pools are sanitized, and this without thinking that we have chlorine in the water and antibacterial agents everywhere. Now I would have a certain confidence in Draghi but I feel the situation as catastrophic. It will take us two years to restart and go to full capacity, at least those who remain, and today we are at stake “.