Big ambitions
The Italian national team Universal Trench of Technical Director Sandro Polsinelli (portrayed in the cover photo with Federal Councilor Roberta Pelosi) will meet today at the French polycamp of Ychoux (in the southwestern region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine) to test the competition terrain where the 2024 World Championship will be held from 22 to 25 August. The Italy of the five cars - which will have Federal Councilor Roberta Pelosi as its head of delegation - presents itself at the transalpine meeting with all its credentials in order. Based on the response of the Assoluti last July and an accurate evaluation of the overall performance of the athletes, Polsinelli has designated a group of the highest technical-competitive level. Ideally leading the Men's lineup at the forty-second Fossa Universale World Championship will be the Italian champion of Eccellenza, the Venetian Alessandro Camisotti, who will be joined by the very famous Tuscan Stefano Narducci and the Calabrian debutant Vincenzo Messina who earned the national team honors with the brilliant second place in the top category at the Umbriaverde Italian Championship.
Young hopes
A very popular adage in sport states: you don't change a team that wins. For the Ladies' team, Director Polsinelli applied that rule to the letter and in fact in the World Cup in Nouvelle-Aquitaine Italy will field Bianca Revello, Rachele Amighetti and Serena Caminotto who will defend the world title won a year ago in the Spanish venue of Avila. The spotlight is also on the Junior trio. Among the Italians, the captain is unquestionably Giuseppe Fiume: the eighteen-year-old Sicilian who wrote a real page in the history of five-machine racing at the European Championship in České Budějovice, winning the overall continental title with 198/200 and a victorious play-off with 25/ 25 against the Spaniard Ruben Puente Sanchez. In the French trip, Fiume will be joined by Mario Fabrizi and the debutant Giacomo Incitti. The Seniors are also a marvelous trio: Pietro Zecchi will compete in Ychoux in the role of outgoing world champion but also as the best Senior on the European continent thanks to the success in the Czech Republic last May. Corrado Pontecorvi and Luciano Fiorini Carbognin will be in the running together with the Milanese specialist. In the Veterans qualification, coach Sandro Polsinelli has called up Roberto Bocci, Giorgio Borrione and Roberto Coppiello, while the Masters banner will be defended by Stefano Bocci, Giorgio Bottigella and Giorgio Ravera. Also characterized by great competence and experience is the technical staff that will support Sandro Polsinelli on the platforms of Nouvelle-Aquitaine with Giuliano Callara in the role of Youth Sector Coach, with Vito Cito in the role of Ladies Coach and with Stefano Terrosi in that of Masters Coach .
Favors but also pitfalls
The forty-second Universal Pit World Championship will officially open on Thursday 22 August with the first 50 competition targets: two series for each of the following three days will lead to determining the champions of the planet for 2024 on the afternoon of Sunday 25 August. Sandro Polsinelli is aware of the potential of the Italian team but also of the pitfalls of a long match in which the blue men and women will compete with highly talented specialists from all continents.
The words of director Polsinelli
“Ychoux – explains Sandro Polsinelli – is a field that we know well because we have played many races on that ground: there are no doubts about the technical reliability of the competition venue because it is a facility with eight fields dedicated exclusively to the Universal Trench which constitutes the official headquarters designated by the French Federation for training in the same specialty. Some difficulties may, if anything, be determined by environmental conditions. We are in the south-west of France, about twenty kilometers from the Atlantic Gulf of Biscay: as a result of that location in this period of the year, with temperatures on average lower than our current ones, on the Ychoux field in the early hours of there is always a bit of fog in the morning which affects the visibility of the targets. There is another more purely technical aspect that we will have to consider carefully: in Italy we are very strict about the so-called out-of-time (editor's note: the start of the target late compared to the voice command given by the athlete), but this is not always the case in other nations that have a much higher margin of tolerance on the phenomenon.”
The results of the European Championship
“At the European Championship in České Budějovice – states the Italian coach – the results were very high because the visibility in that facility is excellent. However, I have no hesitation in saying that the overtimes in the European Championship in the Czech Republic were even excessive, but the paradoxical aspect of overtimes is that if that phenomenon is consistent, as happened in České Budějovice, every athlete assimilates it and neutralizes it in the practice of the test series, but if the mismatch is only barely perceptible, then that can certainly produce the error. The scores will certainly be high also at this World Cup in which we will compete with traditionally strong European schools such as Spain and France, but also with male and female athletes from South Africa and Australia: nations that have now become high-level realities in the Universal. It is no coincidence that in 2026 the Universal Pit World Championship will be held in Australia, which is a nation that is investing heavily in this discipline. But in the meantime let's think about the world championship competition of our present which will, as always, be a great sporting spectacle." (source: FITAV).
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