Women's water polo, why the Setterosa 'pool' is drying up

He had already raised the alarm a few months ago, in a talk later aired on Olympia, on Radio24: 'We are a movement in crisis of vocations, our golden generation, the one that gave us medals between Athens 2004 and Rio 2016, is struggling to find adequate replacements, and I am not talking about quality, but quantity. It is difficult to bring new girls to this wonderful sport'. So said Roberta Bianconi, Olympic silver medallist at Rio 2016, star of Rapallo and elected this year too (for the third time in her career) best player in Europe.
It has a certain effect to hear her, today, repeating the same concepts in the moments when tears and water mingle, a few minutes after the elimination of the Italian team at the hands of the Netherlands 11 to 8.

At 35 years of age, Bianconi announces a pause for reflection regarding the continuation of his career, but in the meantime he reiterates the snapshot of the movement taken in that chat: 'We played with heart but in these games the details make the difference. Holland was more cynical and more lucid. We gave everything and I am happy about that. The basic goal is to take our sport to the top. The hope is to inspire girls to start playing water polo. In my own small way, I try to get into the water trying to pass on to the younger ones the desire to give everything in the water.

A song of love and melancholy for a discipline that today struggles tremendously to broaden its practitioner base. And that it is not a picture taken solely on the basis of the result or the impulse of the moment is borne out by the words of a young member of our expedition, 21-year-old Dafne Bettini, who swallows down two big lumps in her throat before pronouncing her lucid and conscious analysis: 'We leave the water with the awareness of having given everything. We have grown a lot over the course of the tournament. We got off to a bad start with France and went on the upswing with the victory over Greece and the great test against Spain. I am at my first Olympics and I had the shivers going into the water. Now we will honour the tournament and play for fifth place to the best of our ability. The women's water polo sector is in great difficulty. The men's side has a great following, while our side lacks certainties. A difficult picture, on which structural interventions are urgently needed, so as not to tarnish the legend of a team that has written legendary pages of Italian sport, even in the women's category.