<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Civic Network of South Tyrol

Welcome to South Tyrol

Sport

sport - swimmingSport and leisure occupy a prominent place in South Tyrol. In 1999 some 630 sports associations with about 111,175 members provided a level of membership of 33 per cent (the ration of sports associations members to the population). The level of membership in Italy as a whole, according to the latest surveys, is about 15 per cent. There are about 15,000 honorary sports officials who look after the maintenance of organised sport, 169 leisure sport clubs with about 66,509 members and an estimated further 80,000 leisure and health sportspersons who are not members in a club: altogether 272,684 active sportspersons or 63 per cent of the total population.
The alpine clubs AVS (the South Tyrol Alpine Association) and CAI (Italian Alpine Club) have about 40,400 members so that when these are added to the 272,684 a total of 313,084 sports-active persons are obtained, equal to 70.7 per cent of the population, a percentage which is with that of the most enthusiastic sports nations at international level.

The 630 sports associations are divided into 1,374 sections for over 50 different sports. Football and skiing belong to the most popular sports in the sport associations, while the mountaineering is the favoured sport among the members of the leisure sport clubs. There are 38 provincial committees for individual sports, and these are affiliated to the CONI (Italian Olympic Committee). Sports welfare in South Tyrol is assured through the organisation "Sozialwerk des Sports". The umbrellea organisations are the VSS (Verband der Sportvereine Südtirols or Association of South Tyrolese Clubs) for the German and Ladin clubs and the USSA (Unione Societá Sportive Alto Adige or Union of Upper Adige Sporting Societies) for Italian clubs. There are some paid professional sportspersons, but only in ice-hockey, and some semi-professionals in the handball league and the higher football leagues. Media-attracting events with a competitive character are to be found in winter and ice sports (FIS races, ice-hockey, speed skating), in Bozen international tennis and track and field competitions, and in Meran horse-racing.

In 1981 South Tyrol had 702 sports complexes. According to the 1983 Forward Plan for Sports Facilities this corresponded to an implementation level of 54 per cent. On 31 December 1995 South Tyrol already had over 1,915 available. In the last decade great progress has been made in regard to sports facilities: with regard to sports facilities for basic sports disciplines such as skating, football, track and field, open and covered swimming pools, gymnasia, tennis courts and toboggan runs, demand, as opposed to the ideal laid down in the aforementioned Forward Plan for Sports Facilities, has largely been met, in some cases by over 78 per cent. A strong demand still exists with regard to smaller facilities such as areas near residential estates and schools. In winter these areas are often used as skating rinks. In the Province there is no ski jump which can be also used for international competitions, no moto-cross facilities and no cycle-racing track.

The support for sport throughout the Province lies primarily in an increased understanding of sport and leisure as part of culture and human fulfilment. Second, but no less important, the relationships of South Tyrolese sport and its special development because of political relationships to national level sport play a significant role. The shaping of these relationships is the object of the sports autonomy. This sports autonomy is embodied in the Package norm n. 475 of 1975. Substantially it provides for the transfer of supervisory and management powers in the field of sport and for payments from CONI to the Province. The resulting support stems essentially from the fact that the Italian Olympic Committee and the South Tyrolese sports associations affiliated to it, the local branches, the so-called provincial committees, must be provided with those independent powers to which the regions with normal statute are entitled. The transfer of powers from the regional to the provincial sports administrative structures can be compared to the transfer of powers from the Region to the Autonomous Provinces. In 1978, 1983 and 1988 Provincial laws to this effect were rejected by the Italian government on the grounds that the powers of the state body CONI and thus also those of the individual sports associations had been violated. The Package Norm n. 475 is in this respect unclear and therefore needs a reliable interpretation.

To offer also to young people in the sports-world the possibility to train their sport talents in 1994 a sports-school was founded in Mals. The school is financed for the most by the Province of South Tyrol.
In December 1999 the Provincial Government approved the project "doping kills sport", a campaign for the enlightenment work referring to sport and doping mainly at school an in clubs. An information campaign in collaboration with the mass media is planned, too.
Since January 1998 there is also a so-called House of Sports in Bozen, where all the South Tyrolese sports associations are reunited.