With each passing year, humanity takes steps towards the recognition of rights which tend to be more and more universal. Sport is no exception, with battles experienced on the fields and on their edges, athletes who with their experience become standard bearers and spokespersons for general requests, small and large results obtained on the path of inclusion.
2021 brought us the first coming out of an active professional footballer, Josh Cavallo, 21-year-old Australian midfielder of Adelaide United, supported by his club and teammates. Cavallo took six years to accept his sexuality but now he feels perfectly at ease and is convinced that he can “inspire and show other people that it is possible to be yourself and play football”. It would be nice if the same could happen in European professional football, where no active player has yet declared himself homosexual.
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2021 was also a historic year for transgender athletes. The breakthrough opened in Tokyo, with the participation in the Olympic Games of Canadian non-binary athlete Quinn and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbar. Tokyo, however, was also the Olympics of the exclusion of Caster Semenya and the intersex middle-distance runners, who in the past had to undergo numerous tests deemed harmful to their dignity to verify their belonging to the female gender and the level of testosterone.
Also for this reason, in November, the IOC has launched a new charter which prohibits this type of test by abolishing the testosterone limit criterion for athletes’ participation in competitions. “Anyone, regardless of gender identity, sex and its possible variations, has the right to participate in sports competitions” states the charter that after the Beijing Winter Olympics should become mandatory for all federations.
«Athletes will be able choose to compete in the category that best represents their genre of choice“And” only in the case of scientific evidence attesting physical superiority with respect to the reference category can restrictions on participation be applied “. Yes, because here the question, it must be said, is complex, and goes far beyond the preconceived closures of some TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
Female referee
Speaking of gender, this year also Italian football had its first female match director in a match with a Serie A team. Maria Sole Ferrieri Caputi, referee of the sixteenth round of the Italian Cup between Cagliari and Cittadella. Promoted with flying colors, she may soon be the first woman to blow the whistle in a Serie A match.
Of course, resistances remain to decline her role to women and, above all, the bad habit of calling her only by name. As if it were a cousin or a little sister to cuddle and protect, as if in addressing Collina we had ever thought of calling him Pierluigi amicably.
Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles and mental health
There are taboo subjects that we discover to be taboo only when they arise before us. The mental health of athletes is undoubtedly one of them. Nobody would ever dream of denying this right in theory but in practice we often find ourselves having denigrating and belittling attitudes towards those who manifest this kind of discomfort. The idea that every professional athlete makes life as beautiful as possible is so deeply rooted among enthusiasts and professionals that it is unthinkable that behind wonderful athletic gestures, victories, millionaire salaries, we can hide the depression.
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