Written by Diana Pintus
Translated by Martina Ferlisi
Bright moment,
Sweetness, sensuality,
Lust, fantasy,
Dream, happiness
You will find
In my city,
You will find this city…
Jorge Ben Jor – Engenho de Dentro
10th September 2016- h 18.30 – Olympic Stadium Engenhao.
Inside the stadium, built between thousands of controversy at Engenho de Dentro, a simple district, suburban, passing and divided by train rails, Martina Caironi takes a run up to the first of six very long jumps thanks to which she will win the silver medal, the first for the Italian athletics, in the long jump competition T42 (amputated above the knee).
Only the German Vanessa Low jumps longer than her, energetic with new prosthesis, she flies to a new world record:
“Almost immediately, it was clear that I would not have been able to beat her, and so I decided to jump for me, to improve myself.” And Martina succeeded, she jumped 4.66, six centimetres longer than the previous Italian record (always her record), 4.60. She succeeded to bring home the first Brazilian medal that was waiting for her for a long, who knows, perhaps forever. She succeeded in front of an audience that herself defines special “it is the best I’ve ever seen; from the platform I could feel all the heat, all the participation”. All the Carioca love, in short, that is always given to people who deserve it.
People like her, who always smiles: she smiles while she is jumping, she smiles while she is concentrated, she smiles while she is waiting for the result and she also smiles on the podium, awarded by the Undersecretary of the Council Presidency Luca Lotti and plays with the medal and with Tom, the puppet mascot of the Paralympic Games Rio 2016. This is primarily what makes her successful: being deep, she dedicated the medal to the victims of Amatrice because “I think of it for days, they have another chance, I have not,” and, at the same time being joyous, smiling, “a bit ‘crazy,” as she says, having eyes that sparkle and an innate kindness. The kindness that this audience, this city, this people practice and so they could feel and appreciate it.
Gentileza gera gentileza, says a sentence of Jose Datrino, also said the Gentileza Prophet, who spent his life to write it on the walls of the Avenida Brazil viaduct, in the port area of Rio de Janeiro
Few people know what really motivated this character a bit ‘strange, considered, for long time, more a madman than an artist, to try to instil inside people the real meaning of the words Agradecido (grateful) and Gentileza. The legend tells that the spark was the tragedy of the Great North American Circus, a fire started in Niteroi the 17th December 1961, which killed more than five hundred people, most of them, since it was a circus, children. It is said that six days later, before Christmas Eve, Josè took his truck and moved to the fire scene, starting to plant a garden and a vegetables on the ashes of the fire. It is also said that once completed its work of “voluntary comforter” on the site of the tragedy, he began a life of wandering, pasting over town sentences of love, of kindness and respect for the other and for the nature. It is said that he replied those who called him crazy: “I’m mad for love and fool of your safety”.
It is also said that although he had adopted the kindness like a mantra he was “aggressive, moralist and foul-mouthed”, he made rumours, offended and threatened to beat up passers-by. This, in our opinion, makes him more interesting. Because as everyone he was full of shades. Just as the Paralympics and its people with their shades that we try to tell every day
Thanks to Martina and to her thousand shades ( more and more blue, from the tip of her hairs)