DI PAOLA (FISE-EQUESTRIAN FEDERATION): HORSE RIDING AND HORSE RACING, PARALLEL CONVERGENCES

Roman, born in that 1968 made famous by student protests, but evidently not an ascendant given his law degree with top marks. Since 2017 at the helm of the FISE, acronym of Federazione Italiana Sport Equestri, the eighth largest Italian sports federation in terms of number of practitioners, from 2021 a member of the Coni Council, this is the identikit of Marco Di Paola, a man of horses, albeit on the other side of the horse racing passion

A great friend of horse racing many years ago, Giulio Andreotti, talking about politics coined the concept of ‘parallel convergences’, a fortunate oxymoron that, reading this interview, seems to be very topical once again when talking about horses...

President, let's go straight to the point: horse riding and horse racing, enemies/friends?
'Absolutely friends, because we share the same passion for the horse as a fellow sportsperson and therefore also share the same values and goals. I like the image of the other side if we talk about two parallel paths that unfortunately do not meet. We are part of sport; horse racing is part of agriculture: they are two roads that run parallel."

What should horse racing take from the equestrian world and what, conversely, should the equestrian world take from horse racing?
"For us the answer is easy: to horse racing we envy betting. If I could I would immediately bring them into our sport so that we could obviously draw additional resources from them. Unfortunately it is forbidden and therefore a closed discourse. On the other hand, I think horse racing would need the value chain that is inherent in sport and especially in the schooling component. In horse racing there is no school, unlike sport, where you start young, work your way up through the ranks, go through the categories and so on..."

But is it true that you would have warmly welcomed the idea of including horse racing in the Coni alveo that had come up some time ago?
'At the time of Undersecretary L'Abbate an amendment had cropped up that transformed FISE into a public body. It was a solution that was perhaps too futuristic at the time. I believe that today Minister Lollobrigida is working to create a more specialised project. Although the Sella world is present within Masaf, it represents a very small part as far as the horse business is concerned, let's say we are around 5%.
The Agency that we are trying to work on is certainly the most appropriate solution also for managing all technical issues. Entering the world of sport for horse racing would mean facing important and radical changes... being part of a circuit with much stricter, faster rules. What has happened in recent weeks with the Sinner case is there for all to see. For a levity one has to stop for three months; stop one's activity.... Ours is therefore a world that is too rigid and too guarded.There is also a problem of fairness with other countries' systems. Certainly for horse racing it could be an opportunity to demonstrate its true values from a sporting point of view."

Some malicious people claimed at the time that horse racing's budget would be throated....
"Horse racing's budget is certainly an important one even if not adequately important. I believe, however, that we would be catapulted into a complex world without fundamental guarantees such as continuity of financing. Having a financing method that suffers the ups and downs of the Financial Law is not the best way to plan for the medium and long term. In addition, there is also a staffing issue that was not there and, I would say, is not there. These were the most important obstacles, the ones that made it difficult for the system to accept such a solution. Today we are moving towards a dedicated technical entity (the Agency n.d.r.), but with a complex legislative race."

Attempts to bring horseracing, great horseracing, into racecourses so far have not yielded great results, yet these are facilities that would have the right potential in all respects. Is there room to try again?
"We are fortunate to share a passion for this companion sport and games. The racecourse is a marvellous stage, but if you like, it has a lack of content in the sense that once the racing days are taken away, it becomes a facility that in many cases is difficult to use. Just think that every week we have about 8/9000 horses that move around the country to compete, and our sporting needs have also increased a lot in terms of facility requirements, so you can't think of extemporaneous use.
I do think, however, that there would be the prerequisites to create real circuits related to horse riding within the racecourses. The racecourse is a moment of social gathering and before there was the large-scale broadcasting of races on TV or on the internet, it was also a moment of great aggregation. Bringing the racecourse back into the centre of this attention would be important. Think for example of the collateral services..."

How much do you miss a great triumph for Italian horseracing?
"I must say that we defend ourselves quite well in three Olympic and nine non-Olympic disciplines. Clearly the one that is in the spotlight is show jumping. Here we have a group of 6/7 riders in the top 100 in the world, some in 20th place, some in 30th, but also consider that there are as many as 132 nations in the field. Of course what is being pursued is the goal of Olympic victory for which a convergence of favourable events is needed, but it is important to be in the game..."

Back to those two famous tracks... What are the prospects and policies of collaboration with the Ministry in particular for the development of saddle horse breeding?
'Certainly in recent years the relationship with Masaf has improved. The relationship with the General Management is excellent, but also with the political chain of managers through to the administrative chain. Constructive relations. The problem is that, as I said before, we represent a very small percentage of the sector within Masaf. We are the Cinderella because there are other priorities. But we have a counterpart that listens to us and respects us as a technical reference body. We have some divergence of objectives, but this does not lead to clashes in relations. The Ministry's objective is to reward breeding, and therefore breeders, who are the expression of the farming world. The Federation has the objective of building champion horses and athletes and the two aims do not always run parallel. At a certain point in the race, the Federation has an interest in making a meritocratic selection and this does not help all breeders: the Ministry, on the other hand, must think about supporting that very part of the breeding and this is where interests diverge, but it is a physiological fact. At the same time on the other points we always manage to find a balance even in our differences and this is because over the years we have found a Ministry that dialogues and respects."

Among the things you have done together is that fine initiative concerning horses at the end of their careers? How did it go? Will it be replicated?
"Absolutely yes, it is a problem, that of the end of the career, that we also have and therefore we are logically sensitive. Of course the difference is that in horse racing horses have a shorter career and can therefore come to us still in their prime.We have an amateur sector and schools that lengthen the sporting career of a horse by climbing up a level. The issue is well known. In horse racing there is a greater possibility of reconversion because we have a long career, then with the increase in the number of equestrian sports there is a greater need for horses for the many disciplines they can access: Polo, Horseball, Attacks, but also Jumping and Complete. And then the last frontier where the horse can express important values in the coming decades: the horse is increasingly proving to be a wonderful therapist. The mature horse, detoxified from the stresses of competition, can give a lot, can be handled easily because it is used to the relationship with man, and can give very important results. In short, we can do more and more..."