Milan will host the Fencing World Absolute Championships from July 22 to 30, 2023: a major international event valid for the Qualification for the Paris 2024 Games
Milan, November 28, 2022 - Today, at the Automobile Club Milano Headquarters in Corso Venezia 43, the inauguration of the home of the Organizing Committee of the 2023 Fencing World Absolute Championships Milan 2023 was held. An important step in the run-up to the big event scheduled to take place in Milan from July 22 to 30, 2023 at the futuristic MiCo Fiera Milano Congressi in an area of more than 25 thousand square meters. Present at the press conference were Marco Fichera, President of the Milan 2023 Organizing Committee, Anna Scavuzzo, Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Education of the City of Milan, Martina Riva, Councillor for Sport, Tourism and Youth Policies of the City of Milan, and Paolo Azzi, President of the Italian Fencing Federation. Also with them were three champions of Italian fencing, all sword specialists: Enrico Garozzo, Andrea Santarelli and Federico Vismara.
“I am happy to be here today to officially inaugurate what for the next few months will be the home and beating heart of the Milan 2023 Organizing Committee. Milan as the home of the 2023 Fencing World Absolute Championships represents a success for Italian sport: a thank you to all those who, with perseverance and daily commitment, have made this possible”-said Marco Fichera, President of the Milan 2023 Organizing Committee. “Milan 2023 is for Milan, Lombardy and our entire Peninsula a great opportunity for development and growth; an event intrinsically rich in values: fairness, education, respect and discipline. This is why we want Milan 2023 to be an event of everyone and for everyone. The involvement will be total: from the city of Milan, to the federations, from schools to projects with universities, from institutions to associations. Milan 2023 will be a moment of celebration, not only sports, that will reach everyone.”
Greetings also from the host Geronimo La Russa, President of Automobile Club Milano: “We greet with great satisfaction this new rainbow event, which, built also thanks to the extraordinary tradition of Milan’s platforms, consolidates Milan’s international role and we are pleased to make available to the event our facilities, our services and our experience gained in 120 years of organizing motorsport events at world level.”
The eighth world championship organized in Italy, for the first time hosted in Milan, will be the Olympic Qualifying World Championship, with points doubled in the race for passes to the Paris 2024 Games. Detail, the latter, that accentuates the anticipation for Italian fencing, fresh from the eight medals won in the last rainbow kermis in Cairo.
“Since the day of the victory of the Italian candidacy in the FIE Congress in Lausanne, exactly one year ago, I stressed how the assignment of the World Championships to Milan, for the first time, went to fill a historical gap for a city of extraordinary fencing tradition, which has in the myth of the “King of Swords” Edoardo Mangiarotti its most important figure. The Italian Fencing Federation feels a feeling of great pride and deep responsibility toward this challenge that we are carrying out with the Organizing Committee,” - said Paolo Azzi, President of the Italian Fencing Federation. “The Olympic Qualifying World Championships at home represents a great opportunity that our National Teams, returning last year from a record-breaking European Championships in Antalya and a World Championships with no less than eight medals including two gold ones in Cairo, will want to make the most of. In addition to the purely competitive fact, then, there is the enormous significance that such an event brings, for the promotion of our sport and the opportunity to convey its appeal, spread its values. We are approaching with great excitement this 2023, which is finally just around the corner: it will be the year of the double World Championships for Italy, of Olympic fencing in Milan and Paralympic fencing in Terni, and we are proud of this because our Federation for years has turned the dream of total integration between the two specialties into reality.”
Milan can be considered the Italian Fencing Hub thanks to a fencing history and tradition based on ancient roots. Milan 2023 represents an extraordinary moment of promotion not only for fencing, but also for Milan and the whole country. The Milan 2023 World Absolute Fencing Championships will be a driving force for the whole panorama, with Milan increasingly the protagonist of international sporting events and will see the involvement of 1,200 athletes from 165 countries.
“Thanks to the 2023 Fencing World Cup, Milan will be able to consolidate its reputation as an international sports capital,” commented Martina Riva, Councillor for Sport, Tourism and Youth Policies of the City of Milan. “Our city has an important tradition in this discipline, a history that will be honored both by the sporting excellence in the competition and by the organizational competence, hospitality and cultural offer with which athletes, teams and fans will be welcomed. Major sporting events have two great merits: on the one hand, they are good for the Sport System and encourage physical activity among young people, who are increasingly at risk of dropping out of sports; on the other hand, they generate positive spillover effects on all areas in which the life of the city and the territory that hosts them is articulated, from tourism to commerce, from transportation to catering. Today, with the inauguration of the home of the Milan 2023 Organizing Committee, we are all called upon to transform the great occasion represented by the fencing exhibition into reality and opportunity.”
On the occasion, thanks to the contribution of Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Education of the City of Milan Anna Scavuzzo, some of the legacy projects put in place on the journey leading up to the rainbow kermesse were presented. A sporting event, in fact, is characterized not only by sporting competition but also by a series of values it conveys: inclusion, sustainability, participation and respect for diversity. In particular, with a view to involving the local area, one of the most important legacies will be the “School Project,” which, from December 2022 to May 2023, will be activated at 30 Comprehensive Institutes and will involve classes from primary, 1st grade and 2nd grade. The idea is to bring youngsters and children together with Olympic and Paralympic Athletes with the aim of promoting Fencing’s own values such as elegance, respect for others, inclusion and teamwork skills.
“The inauguration of the home of the Organizing Committee of the World Absolute Fencing Championships kicks off the countdown to an event that will once again bring Milan to the center of attention of the international sporting world,” stresses Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Education Anna Scavuzzo. “Sports, and fencing in particular, offer us the opportunity to educate girls and boys about respect, the importance of teamwork and reaching out to one another. That’s why we enthusiastically welcomed the Organizing Committee’s proposal to involve schools and open our doors to Olympic and Paralympic fencing athletes, bringing kids to meet them, listen to them, and measure themselves against them on the piste.”
One of Milan 2023’s legacy projects will be dedicated to universities, the place where excellent educational pathways can be combined with high-level sports performance. With Milan 2023, six universities throughout Italy will be involved in a series of meetings-one per university-with the aim of telling the story of fencing, sport, and behind the scenes. Guests of the meetings will be institutional representatives, athletes and professionals who will describe the professional outlets in sports at the faculties hosting the meetings.
“Sport is not only practiced, but also represents a dispenser of work for everyone and able to accommodate different interests. With Milan 2023, in fact, we want to create projects that reach different targets and leave a positive and tangible mark over time.” said Marco Fichera, Chairman of the Milan 2023 Organizing Committee. “With one eye on sports and one on rights. It is with this in mind that the idea was born to support athletes/parents who will arrive in Milan, bringing their sons and daughters with them, through a kindergarten, a place where they can be entertained and entertained during their parents’ daily activities. Open to children from 2 to 10 years of age, it is our way of showing that in order to change things, we need to start creating the conditions for this to happen,” added Marco Fichera. Giving the opportunity to be able to have this service means not having to impose on parents the choice between their children and work: because only by looking beyond the limits are we able to conquer new horizons.”
The 2023 World Championships will be a key showcase to showcase fencing to the younger generations, both passionate about and also outside the world of fencing, and at the same time to maintain one of Italy’s historical traditions.
