Green Games and Fair Games - these were the attributes of the 7th CSIT World Sports Games
From 5th to 10th of September, the 7th CSIT World Sports Games took place in Cervia and the partner municipalities of Cesenatico, Cesena and Riccione. Despite the flood that shook the Romagna 4 months ago, the region and 47 competition venues hosted the greenest event in the history of the World Sports Games. The event has been promoted by CSIT, International Workers and Amateurs in Sports Confederation, representing 230 million people around the world.
In this year's World Sports Games about 5,000 participants took part from all over the world.
The European Fair Play Movement is very happy and proud to have such an organization on its side.
This cooperation is an essential step in promoting the principles of Fair Play in the world of sports. In this spirit, the CSIT and EFPM regularly announce a competition for the Fair Play Awards during this beautiful event. This year the Award Jury under the leadership of Henk Bouchums consisted of Boris Borisov, Fabio Neroni, Marco Marchetti and Katarina Raczova.
They decided to award the following athletes:
Ana Maria Arlett Rangel (MEX), volleyball, who during a balanced match corrected the decision of the referee to the disadvantage of her team. For this act of fairness she earned the recognition of the opposing team, spectators as well as referee.
The second Fair Play Award was presented to Alessandro Bellavia. The Italian beach wrestling athlete forfeited his gold medal due to misinterpretation of the rules. The jury had based the team score on the Italian federal criteria and not on international standards, which meant that the CAB/AiCS wrestlers took first place with a two-point lead. ASKÖ Austria lodged a protest. The protest was accepted with the agreement of the Italian team. The winner's trophy, which had already been presented to Italy, thus went to Austria, who, however, in the spirit of fairness, left the trophy with Italy.
The swimming relay, represented by ASKÖ, the Austrian CSIT member organization, received the Fair Play Award in recognition of an exemplary gesture. Manual Gunacker, Tony Gschier, ThomasJäger and Robert Schöttl led by coach Klaus Brandstätter returned the bronze medals as soon as they found out that they got them because of a misinterpretation of the competition regulations.
Thanks to these beautiful gestures, the expression "Fair Play" will never be a soulless phrase without meaning.
Allow me one more small note: After the Award Ceremony a young volunteer approached me. She wanted to learn more about the fair play movement, how many proposals we received during the World Sports Games, based on which criteria we decided who to give the Awards to. After our discussion she said, “It’s good to know the stories of the people behind the results”.
16.09.2023
