From the podium of Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in a classroom, that of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Comprehensive Institute in Castel Porziano, Rome.
It's there Rigivan Ganeshamoorthy He was invited by the director and the teaching team to talk with the middle school students, who were keen to see up close and learn more about this extraordinary “champion”.
After the Paralympic gold conquest and of world recordmeasuring 27.06 meters, in the discus throw category F52in which wheelchair athletes compete, Rigi has enjoyed resounding success on social networks where his hilarious interviews have become cult.
Carrying an important message of strength, resilience and passion for sport, with his authenticity, humility and friendliness he spoke without filter, particularly to the youngest.
For this reason, the director of the Mozart Institute, Giovanni Cogliandro, who has always been attentive to educating not only through books, but also with extracurricular activities and meetings that bring meaning to values, jumped at the opportunity to welcome Rigivan, proposed by the Mozart Institute teacher Monica Casella.
Welcomed at the school theater Since thunderous applause and with irrepressible enthusiasm, this 25-year-old, born in Rome to Sri Lankan parents, answered the children's questions by exposing himself, telling with the irony that we know, his human and sporting story of determination and rebirth.
Rigi spoke frankly and honestly about how Sport saved him after the onset of the disease, carrying him to what he calls the new life.
Rigivan, in fact, suffers from Guillan-Barré syndrome, That This causes weakness and difficulty breathingand is in a wheelchair due to a fall in 2019 that caused a neck injury.
Today atHe faces the handicap without dramatization, even in the passages where he recognizes that there are difficult days when he has to face the physical pain that gives him no respite.
What does sport mean to you? How did you feel when you realized you had won gold? How many hours do you train? Who do you have to thank for your victory?
Rigi answers all the boys' questions, alternating between serious and joking tones, continually involving his irreplaceable coach Enrico Ruffini and his girlfriend Alice; a trusted team that accompanies him in all his daily activities and without which – he admits – he would not have achieved the goals he has achieved.
Between one question and another asked by the students, important themes are addressed: anxiety, fears, pain, rebirth, self-confidence. Rigi's words are full of meaning, especially because they are addressed to an audience of adolescents, a category that today struggles to motivate itself and easily collapses at the first obstacles because it does not feel up to it.
Rigivan firmly emphasizes: “It's people who put you in a position to be up to par or not. You have to keep your point of view and move forward, letting what others think remain theirs.”
