Measure aims to combat exploitation of athletes. Decision is criticized by opposition
The organization of the half marathon in Trieste, Italy, scheduled for May 5th, announced this Friday (26th) that no African athlete will be able to compete in the race.
According to Fabio Carini, president of APD Miramar, which promotes the event, the measure was taken to combat the “athlete market”. “We decided to only accept European athletes, to ensure that what is currently a market for highly valued African athletes, who are exploited, is regulated, and we can no longer accept that,” he said.
In Carini's view, organizers of athletics events in Italy are pressured by “unserious businessmen who exploit these athletes and offer them at very low costs, to the detriment of their dignity”.
“Many often receive nothing and are not treated with fair dignity as athletes and human beings,” added the president of APD Miramar. This situation, according to him, also harms Italian and European athletes, “who cannot be hired [by teams] because they have market costs”.
The measure was criticized by members of the center-left Democratic Party (PD). “We have reached the purges in sport, the latest madness of an extremism that is permeating and denaturalizing the city,” said MEP Isabella De Monte.
“We are faced with the absurd: preventing professionals from participating in a race because they are from Africa. Attention, we have been saying for months: the situation is getting out of control, and we are returning to dark times,” he warned.
The regional secretary of the PD in Friuli Veneza Giulia, Cristiano Shaurli, warned that Triste had inaugurated the “season of discrimination in sport”. In 2018, the half marathon was won by Olivier Irabaruta and Elvanie Nimbona, from Burundi, a small country in south-central Africa.
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