Former world champion long jumper
Fiona May said in a newspaper interview Friday that Italy did
not register today's level of racism when she was competing 20
years ago.
Speaking to Corriere della Sera after her daughter Larissa
Iachipino came fourth in her old event at the Paris Olympics,
May said ""Italy has gone backwards 20 years. Twenty years ago
there wasn't all this racism. Or perhaps it's simply that there
weren't social media then. Some people are saying on social
media that Larissa isn't Italian. How can they do that?".
Slough-born, Derby-raised May, 54, who has Jamaican parents, had
her 22-year-old daughter with her former coach and ex husband,
former Italian pole vault champion Gianni Iapichino.
She went on: "The issue is the colour of your skin. Which really
shouldn't be a problem. Even more so in sport. The French
national football team is almost exclusively made up of blacks:
coaches go looking for them in the street, they include them,
they involve them. The same thing happens in England. The
Belgian national team's centre forward for the last 10 years has
been Romelu Lukaku. Why aren't there any blacks in the national
(soccer) team in Italy?"
Asked if Italy was a racist country, the two time world champ
and Olympic silver medallist said: "I'm saying that Italy is
going backwards instead of going forwards. That there's
something, in the country's subconscious...I also don't like it
when the TV commentators say Larissa has an Italian dad, but the
mum, on the other hand, is...I competed all my life in the
Italian national colours".
Iapichino, who won silver at the recent European championships
in Rome, said after her fourth-place Olympic finish that she had
been "stupid" in her approach to the competition, which was won
by America's Tara Davis-Woodhall.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
