RS:X Windsurf Olympic Class. From Monday the World Championships will start in Oman. The Israeli team are excluded from the competition.

Article by Valerio Tripi.

Italian Version:

With the first race starting at 12.00 on Monday the men and women’s World Windsurf Championship will be officially opened in Oman. On the waters of Al Mussanah all the best athletes will take part except for the outstanding sailors on the Israeli team whose visas were denied access into Oman. The Israeli athletes are enormously disappointed. “I still can’t believe I won’t be able to defend my bronze medal from last year’s ISAF worlds” says Maayan Davidovice on her Facebook page.

The president of ISAF Carlo Croce explains in an Interview on Israeli television that, “Israel took the wrong decision at the wrong moment. Then they changed their minds, but it was already too late. We tried to help and I personally sent an email to see if something could be done, but we received a negative response.”

The Israelis received a show of support from many international athletes. The latest comment comes from Thomas Goyard who said, ‘You may not be here in person, but you are the first people that come to mind every day when we pass in front of the hotel where you were supposed to be staying. We know that you wish you were here. We miss you guys!”

As for the results forecast we need to wait until after the qualification days to see who will be in the gold fleet, but it is likely we will see French and Polish competitors such as Julien Bontemps who will try to defend his Santander 2014 title that he won in front of the Polish Przemyslaw Miarczynski and his co-national Thomas Goyard. The level of the athletes in the competition will be high and amongst them will be the Olympic Dutch champion Dorian Van Rijsselberghe, who was also in Palermo with the Greek Byron Kokkalanis, but of course there are plenty of emerging athletes from many nations, for example the Chinese, that could also take us by surprise.

For the women it’s the same situation with the odds on the French championess Charline Picon, who is back in form again, and for the second year in a row will represent her country for the ‘ISA Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards’. In contention for the title is also the Polish Malgorzata Bialecka and Zofia Noceti-Klepacka, silver and bronze medallists respectively at the European’s in Mondello in June. Bryony Shaw won that championship in Sicily and will be wanting to repeat the same result this time round. Other challengers will be the Spanish Olympic championess Marina Alabau, her co-national Blanca Manchon, the Dutch Lilian De Geus and the Polish Maja Dziarnowska.

As for the Italians, four female athletes will be representing Italy; Flavia Tartaglini, Laura Linares, Marta Maggetti and Veronica Fanciulli and only two male athletes; Mattia Camboni and Daniele Benedetti. The potential of the male category has been weakened by the absence of Federico Esposito and Marcantonio Baglione, (the latter of whom did not take part either in the Italian Championships in Naples) where Esposito just missed out on the Gold medal finishing second behind Camboni, but finishing with an excellent result nonetheless following his win at the recent European Championships in Mondello.

Nella Foto Marcantonio Baglione

This and many other aspects which concern Baglione are just part of the complicated and paradoxical situation which have emerged since the ISAF worlds in Perth in 2011 when his sailing club communicated to the Federvela (via the general secretary Gianni Storti) that the athlete Baglione has been psychologically damaged and has been required to suspend all FIV team activities. We can read in the relise “After the “messy” administrative and technical conduct, which also involves the team managers Michele Marchesini and Alessandra Sensini as well as the coach Riccardo Belli, the leading national 2014 Olympic RSX Sailing Team man has been forced to suspend all competitive activity and renounce, for the third year running, the central national training program of the Italian Sailing Federation led by Carlo Croce.’. And again in 2012, where he proved himself as a top athlete in the Olympic team, in 2013 and 2014 where he finished ever higher on the results table earning him a position of 3^rd place in the ISAF world ranking and to finish 11^th overall and first Italian at the European’s in Cesme, Turkey.

It’s precisely this result in Turkey that on paper qualifies him as the leading athlete on the Italian Team for the Worlds in Santander in 2014 (organized directly by ISAF for all Olympic and Paralympic classes). In addition, his result in Turkey, qualifies him as the only athlete from the men’s RS:X class from the 2015 Italian Olympic National Team to be selected for the official Federvela team to participate at the PreOlympics in Rio organized by the Federvela. However they left him without a coach and loaned a board in terrible condition (not even fit for club sailing).

According to the sailing federation rules at the Santander Worlds, all the FIV qualified athletes would be financed and supported by the Federvela training program. But the reality for Baglione, even at Santander, was that he had to fund everything himself and was excluded by the technical director Michele Marchesini from the main training program and transportation of the Italian team to Santander and who continues to favour the two Civitavecchia athletes with Federvela benefits and as protagonists of the “Rio a Tutti I Costi” project.

An action and a technical decision that heavily influenced the wellbeing and technical support of Baglione on a medical, logistical and organisational level and that propelled the two Camboni-Benedetti Civitavecchia athletes forward; both of whom were always at the forefront of Federvela press and masking in reality, in terms of actual results, the top national athlete at that time. Baglione’s results were also often masked even in technical press articles leaving us to the conclusion that the lead coaches in the Federvela Olympic training program were only interested in nurturing the: ‘Rio a tutti I Costi’ program and were most likely ignorant of the damage they were causing to the other athletes, their clubs and to the Federvela itself.
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In the below photos, screen shots from the website http://www.rioatutticosti.com/ we can see one with two athletes and another with five people, two are which are the national Olympic team coaches Adriano Stella (RS:X Women) from Civitavecchia and Riccardo Belli (RS:X Men) from Palermo. In the subsequent photo, we can see the FIV coach boat driven by coach Belli at the Worlds in Santander, which was used exclusively by Camboni and Benedetti only.

The sub-standard training program in Italy leaves us wondering whether the discouragement of the athletes in all competitions, even international, is a conscious decision made by the president of the FIV Carlo Croce and the technical directors Marchesini and Sensini. The fact is it’s the coaches themselves that choose the names to be put forward for the 2016 Olympics since it depends on their personal evaluation of the athletes. The final selection in the end will be made by the federal committee and will be based on the coaches’ evaluation but must be supported by the results. There is a feeling at the moment, and not only in windsurfing, that for the technical federation staff there are athletes already in an ‘advantaged’ position compared to other team members, even before the evaluation of the final results has been made (May 2016).

In the Women’s class for example, Flavia Tartaglini has already been ‘pre-qualified’ according to her coaches evaluation, but which will need to be confirmed by her results. On the other hand Laura Linares, fresh from her victory in September at the Italian Nationals, who frightens her adversaries with her ability to reach the podium at major competitions and who does not follow the main Federvela training program, shows no intention of giving a millimetre to her competitors.

In questa foto: da sinistra Carlo Croce, Michele Marchesini ed Alessandra Sensini rispettivamente Presidente, Direttori Tecnici della Federazione Italiana Vela.

Per saperne di più: http://www.rsxclass.com/worlds2015/