Una nuova sociabilità: il canottaggio sul tevere dall’unità d’Italia al fascismo

This paper concerns the introduction of the “gentleman’s hobby” of rowing into Italy from Anglo-Saxon culture and its subsequent evolution into a true sporting discipline in the Italian context. This writing tries to explain how the use of the oar, more in Rome than somewhere else, has produced a strange cohabitation along the river of the typical English man’s sobriety and the odd “boatman’s exuberance” which is the main feature of Roman people along the banks of the Tiber. The intoduction in Rome of the English oaring custom has settled a strange cohabitation of Anglo-Saxon moderation – typical of the English “gentleman” – and carefree youth of the local people – typical of the boatmen. The 20th century begins the modernity and the technical development of rowing bringing up the value of its “coubertinian” change from an ancient tradition into an ideal discipline of Sport. In Italy the requirement of establishing a national federation that gathers the whole rowing movement was already rife, especially in the two towns more involved into the matter Turin and Rome. In Rome the passion for rowing was born between Sport and vogue as a hybrid between two contrary concepts of the way of living. Rowing combined these two concepts together into the shape of a great event that associates, gathers, entertains the audience like a true social and athletic happening. The heritage of the first World War didn’t keep rowing from surviving and proliferation, although in the post-war period Rome was an open building yard and human and economical resources were exhausted. The intervention of the Fascist government prevented the regression and involution of the whole “Oar System” and during the first twenty years made Sport as the catalyzing phenomenon of its home politics of consent. The gold reserve of university students, registered to fascist youth organization such as the GUF (Giovani Universitari Fascisti), assured a long sequence of victories: the spirit of self sacrifice, the obedience to the orders, the endurance to hard trainings and the will of standing out among all the others, were requirements and peculiarities coming from fascist ideology.

Il percorso storico e analitico intrapreso ripercorre le tappe evolutive del canottaggio italiano nell’ambito più ampio di un quadro sociale e culturale di riferimento che non può prescindere dalla valutazione del processo di “sportivizzazione”. Anche il canottaggio italiano, a partire dalla seconda metà del XIX secolo, ha sperimentato il passaggio dalla fruizione di passatempi e giochi collettivi a quella di nuove attività motorie di matrice anglosassone che è poi equivalso all’affermarsi di ciò che, con un termine intraducibile, riconosciamo come sport moderno. Questo studio si propone di analizzare l’“importazione” in Italia di quella che può essere considerata una pratica tipicamente anglosassone consolidata da secoli di tradizioni e che è corrisposta all’assimilazione di un modello originale ed inusitato capace di produrre negli anni un proliferare di accezioni e personalizzazioni unico e tipicamente italiano. La ricerca è stata condotta presso gli archivi delle società remiere storiche romane e presso la biblioteca nazionale sportiva del Coni.