From Christmas lunch to the starting line: a dream, four matching jerseys and a network of people who made it possible. It was the Christmas lunch of the InSuperAbile 2025 project. At that table, for the first time, Maria Luisa Garatti, Paralympic champion living with multiple sclerosis, talks to Cristian about the New York City Marathon. Cristian, who lives with a cognitive and hearing disability and plays soccer for a local Paralympic sports club, listens, and something lights up inside him. When he understands that it can really happen, he goes wild with joy. His parents say yes with great enthusiasm, and they mean it, taking on a big commitment first: they are the ones who will cover the cost of their son’s trip, because a dream, to take off, also needs a ticket. Then they look the problem in the face: forty-two kilometers is a long way, New York is far, and Cristian needs support.
Vania Guerini, president of the La Nuova Cordata cooperative in Iseo, the “home” where Cristian goes every day, decides to find someone to stand by his side. She knocks on the door of the Lions Club Sebino, which in turn turns to the Lions Club Brescia Teamlife, which for years has been turning wishes into reality with “La Valigia dei Sogni” (“The Suitcase of Dreams”), a solidarity project. Behind that name lies a whole year of initiatives, the volunteers who keep them going, and the journeys of president Ersilio Ambrosini, who carries the suitcase far away to people ready to believe in the value of a dream.
Teamlife chooses to cover the expenses for a companion, and the Lions Club Sebino joins the effort by offering its contribution. Because when forces unite, a dream reaches those who need it most. And so begins a chain of yeses, and no one keeps it to themselves: everyone gives what they have, their time, their legs, their experience, their support. The companion is Silvia Iore “Cioka”, an operator at the La Nuova Cordata cooperative, the person with whom Cristian shares many of his training projects. A familiar face: accompanying him to New York is the next step on a path they already walk together every day, and for this reason she is a fundamental piece of this dream. When it comes to running, though, Silvia is starting practically from scratch, and she says yes without yet knowing the most demanding part: to stay by Cristian’s side she will have to run all 42 kilometers 195 meters with him, and so train, train, train. In June the work begins, with guidance from Dr. Gabriele Rosa, President of Rosa Associati. Dawn wake-ups, and setting the pace is a super coach: Giancarlo Rodenghi, known as Goghi, who has taken this goal particularly to heart. He follows them with passion, patience and a steadiness that knows no breaks. He writes out the weeks one by one and finds the right method: running and walking in turn, and each time a few minutes less walking, given back to running.
But his greatest role is not measured in kilometers: Goghi is both coach and motivator, the one who points out the road and the one who makes you believe it can be traveled. The first to be surprised, however, was he. He had built the plan with care, but Cristian and Silvia showed from the very start an aptitude he had not expected: they ran longer than he had imagined, and the minutes of walking shrank faster than planned. Beyond his rosiest expectations. For someone who trains and motivates, a surprise like that is worth more than a stopwatch: it says the road was the right one.
From Veduggio con Colzano, in the province of Monza and Brianza, comes Omar Ratti, a runner, who steps in as a second guide: one more pair of legs beside Cristian. His is a story of redemption and of refusing to give up: difficult years weighed on him, in health and in selfconfidence, and then running arrived, changing his life and giving him the strength to start over. He has already run seven marathons with his friend and motivator, Maria Luisa Garatti. Today he takes on a challenge worth far more to him than a race: putting himself on the line again, overcoming his fears, proving to himself that limits are, sometimes, exactly the ones we impose on ourselves. Because running does not change only the body: it can change a life, create deep bonds and teach that it is never too late to start again. For Paralympic champion Maria Luisa Garatti, meanwhile, the circle closes.
In 2016, ten years ago, New York was her first marathon, with a group of people with multiple sclerosis, part of the project of the association she chairs, Se Vuoi Puoi. That finish line was the beginning of her path as a Paralympic athlete and of her way of using sport: as testimony and as inclusion. Since then she has continued along the World Marathon Majors circuit. She returns for the fifth time, on the tenth anniversary of her first, for her twentieth marathon, with the support of BCC Basso Sebino. The baton, now, is passed: the one who ten years ago was taking her first steps toward that finish line runs beside those who are taking theirs today, and was the first to speak to Cristian about that road. A dream like this does not start on its own: it has to be made possible in every detail. That is the work of Rosa Associati, which believed in this project from the very beginning, offering the experience of Dr. Gabriele Rosa, author of the first training guidelines, as well as the management of the entire trip.
From winning 11 New York City Marathons with professional athletes to arranging trips and race bibs for amateur runners, the company has always paired technical expertise with a deep social vocation. For Dr. Rosa, sport is above all a tool for inclusion, at the heart over the years of numerous projects for people with disabilities or illnesses — as it was for Maria Luisa ten years ago, one of many tied to the New York City Marathon. Because to organize means to create the conditions for everyone to reach their own finish line. Sportland dresses the four in the same jersey. La Nuova Cordata remains the place where Cristian grows, among socio-educational activities and the people cheering for him. Four matching jerseys, four different stories, one course. Cristian, Maria Luisa, Silvia and Omar will run the same forty-two kilometers and 195 meters, each with their own struggles, and no one will run in place of another: each will run with the others. A disability does not define a person; it is one of the features of their story. An inclusive society does not build special paths: it makes the same path accessible to everyone. The message of this shared endeavor in the Big Apple will surely live on in schools, associations and companies, well beyond the finish line.
“I’m happy because in November I’m going to run the New York City Marathon.” Cristian says it all the time, to everyone. On November 1 he will be at the start wearing the same jersey as three fellow travelers and a course identical to everyone else’s. The first step will be his.
The project is made possible by: Lions Club Brescia Teamlife (project “La Valigia dei Sogni”), Lions Club Sebino, BCC Basso Sebino, Rosa Associati, Sportland, La Nuova Cordata cooperative.
