2010’s Italian Championship: ‘our’ Silvio Sbarigia wins bronze!

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Silvio Sbarigia, with his team, “Canottieri Roma” (Rome Rowing Club), has been awarded a bronze for the over 60s championship at Montecatini. The gold deservedly went to the Sarzane Patané team and the silver to the La Spezia Marino: well done to all.

We have taken this opportunity to exchange a few words with our Silvio, who has responded with his habitual lucidity and frankness.

Silvio, do you feel more satisfied or more disappointed with winning this bronze?

Taking into account the quality of the play of my team then, all things considered, I think the bronze is the best we could have done, but, for sure, I am not satisfied with the placing. Before I say anything, we lost a playoff against the Patanè team which meretoriously won the gold.  It did not go well because not all of my players who were present were in their best form for this event. The playoff against the Patane team was lost simply through tiredness. Carlo Mosca and myself had to play all of the last five rounds in succession well into the night, by virtue of not having available replacements. In the last match, the night before last, we were really, really tired. At this point we were in the lead, but then I made a silly mistake in the bidding that cost us the playoff; I misinterpreted one of Carlo’s bids. Even Carlo was extremely tired and he went down in a contract he otherwise would have made. May I remind you that we are over 65 years of age and the hard work was felt. It is my belief we were not sufficiently lucid to cope with the cumulative stress.

 Do you think there is a case for having less gruelling sessions for the over 60s?

Absolutely not, the session formats are fair: the problem lies only with us in that we did not have the possibility of making any necessary changes, because, as I have already explained, not all the pairs in our team had either been coached adequately or were in form, a player was not feeling well, and it was a burden on us to play successive rounds. Of the last nine rounds, Carlo and I played seven. Had we been in the same circumstances as last year we could have easily won this years Italian Cup. Unfortunately,  the lack of training of some of our players hindered us; as one of our pairs played well below their par, we were forced to play catch-up and this penalised us.

 What is your opinion on the final result?

The best team certainly won – that is Patanè Sarzane. We also had the misfortune of meeting them in the semi-final.

The three teams on the podium are :

Patanè (Buratti-Comella; Belli-Leonardi; Melli-Pagano)

Marino (Bettinetti-Marino; Battistoni-Bertolucci; Longinotti-Maci)

 Sbarigia (Mosca-S. Sbarigia; Gigli-Latessa, Giove-P. Sbarigia) 

 

 translated by  Alex Ainsworth (Slothy)

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