MILAN – Gariwo and sport’s heroic face

“Sport unites people even in the most difficult moments, when there are wars and divisions. It is not a matter of champions, but of every person who competes with themselves and others.” With these words, Gabriele Nissim, president of the Gariwo foundation (Garden of the Righteous Worldwide), introduced the foundation’s 2025 program. Ahead of the Milan-Cortina Olympics in 2026, Gariwo will explore the figures of the “Righteous in sports”, athletes who distinguished themselves for their ethical and human commitment. The program begins in Milan on the European Day of the Righteous, on March 6, with a meeting at Palazzo Marino, the seat of the city government.
On March 11, five athletes will be inducted into the Garden of the Righteous of Milan: Polish skier Bronislaw Czech (1908-1944), who, after participating in three Olympics, joined the resistance against the Nazi occupation and helped smuggle people and documents across the mountain border between Poland and Hungary. The Gestapo arrested him in 1940, and Czech was among the first deportees to Auschwitz, where he died after four years of imprisonment.
Many years later, cyclist Henry Seidel (1938-2020) helped more than a hundred people escape communist Eastern Germany to the West through a tunnel excavated under the Berlin Wall.
Gariwo will also remember the Czechoslovakian track and field champions Emil (1922-2000) and Dana Zatopek (1922-2020), a husband-and-wife duo. They supported Prague Spring, a brief political and economic liberalization that ended when in 1968 Soviet forces invaded the country, and paid their dissent with forced labor. Italian physician Antonio Maglio (1912-1988), among the founders of the Paralympics, and Khalida Popal, founder of Afghanistan’s football women’s team, who in 2021 organized the rescue of 300 people fleeing the Taliban regime, will also be commemorated.
To mark the occasion, the volume Storie dei Giusti dello sport (Stories of Sport Righteous), published by Mimesis in 2025, will be reissued. The book includes stories of athletes such as champion road cyclist Gino Bartali, recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous among the Nations for his rescue activities during WWII. “Any athlete wins when, through sport, they improve the worlds and relationships among people,” emphasized Nissim, launching an appeal to promote a wider culture of fair play and respect across disciplines.