Another first for Torino 2025. The next edition of the World University Winter Games, scheduled in 426 days in the city and region where the event was born under the name Universiade, will be the first event open to all without barriers of any kind. The best paralympic athletes enrolled at universities in every country will be the protagonists on the snows of Piemonte from 13 to 23 January 2025, in an event under the banner of inclusiveness and social sustainability.
The worldwide announcement came during the talk organised at Casa Tennis in Piazza Castello during the Nitto Atp Finals, further confirmation of Piedmont’s vocation as a Land of Sport, just as the claim of Torino 2025 states. The decision was taken on Monday evening by the Board of Directors of the Organising Committee of the Games.
The choice conforms to the guidelines of the Department for Sport of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which promotes sustainability and innovation to foster socialisation and inclusion. This decision amplifies the will of the Federation of Italian University Sport (FederCUSI), which promotes concrete actions of social inclusion, through the practice of motor and sports activities at the national and territorial level, and consistently the opportunity to hold para-snow sports competitions, was proposed to FISU already in the candidature phase for the attribution of the World University Winter Games.
Giving the official announcement was the President of the Torino 2025 Organising Committee, Alessandro Ciro Sciretti: “Today we are announcing a great novelty, because Torino 2025 will be the Universiade of all and for all. The Universiade will be open for the first time to Paralympic athletes, who will be able to compete in snow sports disciplines together with able-bodied athletes. In Turin, therefore, another first after the invention of the Universiade in 1959, driven by our territory’s intention to innovate in the name of social sustainability. We look forward to Torino 2025”.
This news arrives on the day when the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella inaugurated the Festival of Paralympic Culture in Taranto in the name of inclusion. This is the message from the FISU Winter Games Director, Milan Augustin, who is pleased with this innovation coming from Torino: “We have been working on this for the past two years with the Organising Committee and the FIS, because this project has long been included in the FISU’s long-term global strategy for 2027, so I am very happy about this news. This is a historic day for the entire university sports movement, which, once again from Turin where everything was born thanks to Primo Nebiolo, adds another important opportunity, namely that of participation also for para-athletes with visual impairments, or the Sitting and Standing categories in alpine and cross-country skiing. It was very important to start with this new page, which we hope to expand in terms of disciplines and numbers during future editions that will follow the virtuous example of Turin 2025”.
The president of the FederCUSI, Antonio Dima, echoes him: “Upon hearing the news of the opening to parasports at the FISU World Winter University Games, I congratulate the Torino 2025 Organising Committee and its President Sciretti for this valuable and commendable initiative. The openness to the world of disability and its inclusive current through sport represents for FederCUSI not only a founding stone of this governance but also a statutory mission that is more and more actual and witnessed. The occasion of Torino 2025 are a showcase and an international stage that gratify the choices made at national and territorial level. FederCUSI’s support for this important initiative is total”.
Fabrizio Ricca, President of the Honour Committee of Torino 2025 and Councillor for Sport of the Regione Piemonte, said: “For the first time, the barriers between Paralympic and Olympic sport disappear. It is a fundamental achievement that allows us to reaffirm once again that sport is synonymous with unity and sharing. It was with this spirit that we fell in love with the Universiade and it was always with this spirit that we fought to ensure that it came to Turin. It has been years of relentless work, but we are certain that the athletes and the people of Piedmont will be enthusiastic about what awaits us”.
One of the great supporters from the moment of the candidature is the deputy vice-president of Torino 2025, Riccardo D’Elicio: “We started already at the candidature stage and from the time of the promoter committee with the idea that was initially of a Para-Universiade and we turned it into something even bigger with the inclusion of para-sports in the programme of the Games. I personally talked about it with CIP president Luca Pancalli and FISIP president Paolo Tavian, as well as with CIP vice-president Tiziana Nasi, today a welcome guest at the Torino 2025 talk during the Atp Finals. We have worked hard and university sport in Turin has won again and now the Organising Committee of the Games has this extraordinary opportunity for an even more inclusive Universiade”.
The testimonial of this initiative is Paralympic champion Alessandro Daldoss, a visually impaired skier and speaker at this afternoon’s talk at Casa Tennis, where he showed off the 2013/2014 World Cup he won in the Visually Impaired category: “I am delighted to be present on such an important day that marks a historic moment for the Universiade. To me, just the word evokes great memories because I was only the forerunner with my guide at the 2013 Trentino Universiade, while now the disabled athletes will actually be able to compete on the same tracks as their able-bodied colleagues”.
