The book

Irresistible girls: the female revolution in Italian sport

A book by Dario Ceccarelli celebrates the winning women in Italian sport, symbols of a silent revolution that broke gender patterns

7 November 2024

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The Olympics showed this clearly: in sport now - and fortunately, we might add - there is no longer an A series represented by men and a B series impersonated by women.

If a few female examples of class and superlative technique in various sporting disciplines were not enough, the force of numbers asserts itself with all its weight: for Italy in Paris - and this is the first time in an edition of the Summer Olympics - it was the women who won the most golds, despite the fact that the men won more medals overall. Seven golds, in fact, were all for women against three for men, to which must be added the two triumphs in mixed competitions. In the overall number of medals won, men still lead but female athletes and competitions with female protagonists have made an indelible mark in the collective imagination of the Games.

If we consider, rightly, the Olympics as the highest expression of world sport, this result has great symbolic value and perhaps it is no coincidence that the Games for Italy ended with the extraordinary women's Italvolley victory over the American champions, a competition that thrilled the whole country, with TV share percentages like the (men's) national football team.

Certainly the impact in mass culture is still unbalanced, but the 'silent women's revolution', as the great girls' volleyball coach Julio Velasco put it, has now begun and the glass ceiling has been broken.

It has not been an easy path: on the contrary, it has been a long and tiring journey, experienced with commitment and effort by the first pioneers and then confirmed with the hard work, sweat and talent of so many other female athletes who have left their mark on the history of sport, often not before having scandalised certain well-wishers who wanted women only relegated to the kitchen or, or, at least, not engaged in gruelling competitions and exhausting training, drenched in a disgraceful sweat and dressed inappropriately for what was defined as the 'weaker sex', devoted to sacrifice within the home or little more.

A long way

It took several decades to reverse course, if it is true that even Baron de Coubertin, the inventor of the modern Olympic Games, was fiercely opposed to the participation of women in sports competitions. But the courage, the dream and the tenacity of a few 'irresistible girls' paved the way and opened a door to many other passionate young dreamers, eager to put themselves to the test in sport as in life, without having to ask permission or authorisation from anyone, without having to be judged as time wasters or 'tomboys' to be re-educated.

A roundup of these beautiful figures of athletes and women is now published by Dario Ceccarelli for the Minerva editions of Bologna, with a preface by Diana Bracco and an afterword by Lella Costa: 17 author's portraits plus a final chapter devoted precisely to the girls of the Italian expedition to Paris 2024, that women's sporting celebration that began with the gold medal in team fencing and culminated, as we have said, with the victory of the national volleyball team of Anna Danesi, Paola Egonu and Myriam Sylla, to name but a few.

The first portrait is dutifully dedicated to Alfonsina Strada, an almost mythological figure and the only female cyclist to take part in a men's Giro d'Italia, but moving on from Ondina Valla to Lea Pericoli, from Novella Calligaris to Paola Pigni, one arrives at today's skiing champions - Federica Brignone and Sofia Goggia - with the sensation of having crossed a century of Italian sport linked by a red (or rather pink) thread of passion, stubbornness, courage and sentiment that cannot fail to arouse admiration. In Ceccarelli's gallery, full of stories that sometimes have the unbelievable, there is also a fully deserved place for Bebe Vio Grandis, fencing champion and perhaps the world's best-known Paralympic athlete. Here the recognition is double, in a way, and indicates - in the book is another very clear thread - that Paralympic sport too has now gained full citizenship and resonance at all levels, overcoming old stereotypes and outdated representations. The success, also in terms of the public, of the Paralympics is ample proof of this.

All well, then? And they lived happily ever after?

Not yet... It is emphasised in many quarters that power in sport and its governing bodies is still exclusively in the hands of men. Just as coaches are still predominantly male. Another piece of road to go, therefore, for full and final equality. But the passion, enthusiasm and joy that come from sport are a gift now for everyone and (above all) everyone. And for this, in significant part, we can truly thank the 'irresistible girls'.

Dario Ceccarelli

The Irresistible Girls. Winning women in Italian sport

Minerva Editions, 240 pages, euro 17.10