You have a passion for badminton. Yup? We’re sorry, but you don’t have the opportunity to play or train in Florence.
We write on behalf of the provincial delegation of the Badminton Federation (FiBA) and the Stormy Weather Florence Badminton Club of Florence. https://linktr.ee/Stormy.Weather.Firenze.BC
We would like to share with you first of all a trivial concept: if a sport, in a municipality, has only a gym available in which there are only places for eight players, this is a sport destined to remain a sport with eight members, remain one. minor sport. Not to mention the promotion of the coaching of this sport for children and teenagers towards the Italian championships.
We remain convinced that badminton is not a sport with less diffusion: it is not true that being few we need a small space. It is exactly the opposite: we are few because we have no space. It follows that we do not even promote because we would not know where to let children and adults play.
The problem.
In the last ten years badminton and the Stormy Weather company have looked for larger spaces out of the municipality of Florence and when they found them they had the opportunity to expand the number of members in the municipalities of Fiesole first and then of Vaglia. Both experiences ended when the space manager tripled the hourly cost request overnight. We returned to Florence in September 2021 in the eight-player gym and every week we have to decline the requests for new members because we have no space for them to practice.
In 2022 we will return to ask for spaces directly from the municipality of Florence because we cannot be at the mercy of managers who do not want to do the lines of our sport – seconding the referees of this or that discipline – and we cannot sustain sudden increases that triple the price just to cash in on a sport he doesn’t care about.
Who has the authority
We ask that the City of Florence takes care of a planning of spaces in the neighborhoods not only on the basis of the historicized situation, but by proposing a multiple offer that meets the demands that have arisen in recent years, starting with the search for sports where physical contact is lacking and which are playable at all ages. Citizens do not need the usual four disciplines to be offered in all city gyms. Sport is good for all citizens of any age group and any income it is therefore correct that inclusive disciplines suitable for all ages can develop by giving children and adults the opportunity to do sporting activities at affordable prices.
We ask CONI that the municipality of Florence guarantees this change of approach. There must be no series A and series B sports. Each discipline must have the opportunity to be proposed in a suitable way. It is not possible that lines cannot be drawn because they disturb some referees. Or that you can propose a sport only if you don’t disturb the managers of a space that is also municipal.
The solution
We want the municipality of Florence to allow the use of one or more sports facilities of a suitable size (to be understood, the size of a basketball or soccer field5) to give way to the dozens of fans present in the area to be able to practice badminton.
We await your kind feedback on the intentions of the Municipality regarding the methods that will be put in place to meet the expectations of the signatories.
