2014 Italian Nationals

The Italian Nationals 2014

by David Shead

Italian nationals It's an easy flight from the UK to Italy but (I am writing this on the plane back) much harder to come back from because it is so nice, and coming to this championships was no exception the weather was hot, countryside is beautiful the hotel first class, the championship well organized, the wrestlers very sporting, the referees lovely to work with, you might think I had a good time? But it was better than just good it was fabulous, Claudio Rizza has a very good experienced team of women who look very professional all in their uniforms running the competition, I know I have said that before but you can't watch this competition without noticing, it is exceptional and is something I would like to see at the Europeans and World's, it is also a bonus that Claudio’s team are extremely beautiful, but I  must stop their before I get carried away and demand the pilot turn the plane around and take me back. Fulvio (Italy's head referee) has done a good job of training his referees they are getting very good now  and more and more are coming for training, they had a total of 12 refereeing that is a good number,  and 10 more at different levels just for my training seminar, so this is going very well, (and all countries remember you should all be doing a refereeing seminar like this, this year) and their where no protests,  of course the wrestlers did not always agree with the referees calls, they sometimes made objections to the referees but they excepted the referees answer whether 

They Agreed with it or not this is partly because they are good sportsmen and partly because they have a good relationship and respect between the referees and competitor's, which is very important but hard to achieve, because you will not get Trust and respect if you don't have good referees and when you don't have Trust good people will not want to referee, so it is something the leaders of the federation must work on with their head referee to build on over time, and clearly it is going very well in Italy, in almost every country I go to you could measure the amount of trust and respect by the number of good referees they have because one goes hand in hand with the other, so it goes without saying that the referees did a great job here. 

There where 170 competitor's which is down from the last 2 years this maybe because it was in a smaller town.

The top competitors are really very good, it is a wonder they do not win more medals internationally. In the masters class I was refereeing Davide Bertoli (who is both a Italian champion and a senior Referee) I set him up in one match, then a few minutes later he was back at my table for another so I started to set him up, I was expecting the same as the first time, but he had changed his style so much I had to double check it was him, being able to change your style like this shows good training and experience I am not surprised he is one of their top Armwrestlers.  I also love the way the passionate even fiery Italian temperament is channeled into the sport of armwrestling resulting in fiery matches yet with good sportsmanship, it was excellent. I can't wait to go back. 

David Shead

EAF Assistant Director of Referees