Sport has always held an important place in my life. I would say a central place. And I have constantly done my utmost to have the word ‘sport’ given its rightful place in the Italian Constitution.

I argued this before President Sergio Mattarella in October 2022, during the inauguration of the academic year at the School of Higher Military Training in Turin, when I delivered the inaugural address on Sustainability.

Rights and Values in Sport and Culture in the Third Millennium. Rights, above all, are central. We cannot permit discrimination, whether based on gender, skin colour, religion or ethnicity.

And respect has to be the rule of the game, both among the players on the pitch and the spectators in the stands. Hence the Department of Sport states that, ‘In the Constitution, sport is the first step on a path that expresses, in a few words, a profound significance and an inestimable value, which we can sum up in the hope of “sport for all and of all”, as a part of the indispensable “social immune defences” and an important contribution to improving the quality of life of individuals and communities’. And since September 2023, Article 33 of our Republican Constitution has a new paragraph declaring that: ‘The Republic recognises the value of sporting activities in all their forms in fostering educational, social and psychophysical well-being’.