I can't go back to yesterday, because then I was a different person
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
-----------------------------------
Many years ago, we used to play soccer with Andrea Balducci.
Balducci was our neighbor, a pure nine who never came down to defend, and he was also a lost Italian, and when Italy won the World Cup in 1982, all of us neighbors threw him into the pool to see if he would shut up, but neither for those. From the bottom of the pit, a very deep bottom, we could hear Balducci shouting:
- We are the world champions!
So, infected with euphoria, we all ended up jumping into the water to celebrate the Italian catenaccio.
(and that Gentile, Cabrini and Rossi had been driving us crazy for days, because then we all belonged to Zico and Sócrates)
Then Balducci left football and switched to paddle tennis, and in that world he grew up.
He grew so much that his passion also became contagious, like that of the catenaccio, and some neighbors also switched to paddle tennis, and so did Gianluca Basile (47), who is the protagonist of this Vuelta y Vuelta, so it's time to start talking about him, I mean Basile.
(...)
Twelve years ago, when he played basketball for Barça, Gianluca Basile won the Euroleague. He was a very elegant shooting guard in the days of Ricky Rubio, Navarro, Mickeal, Lakovic and Grimau, and his time with Barça was followed by others at Bennet Cantú, Olimpia Milano and Capo d'Orlando in his beloved Sicily, where he hung up his suspenders and retired to live.
So it was 2016.
And then?
Then you had to get out of the bubble.
–Look, throughout my professional life I have been to places! And yet I haven't been able to see them. When I played basketball, I spent my time from the hotel to the pavilion. And I spent twenty years as a professional, living basketball as an obsession – Gianluca Basile tells me, who has three daughters and a mutual friend: good old Andrea Balducci.
– And what have you been doing in these years, after basketball? I ask him.
-I needed a mental break: that's how I discovered that you could live without basketball. Who would have told me! I went fishing or mushroom picking. And I was helping my wife, who ran an association to help street dogs. I have had free time, time to think and find things and not get bored. One day, Balducci taught me paddle tennis. He didn't drive me crazy at first, but he insisted. So he convinced me. He did it two years ago, when we met at the Palau Blaugrana for the tenth anniversary of the Euroleague.
Andrea Balducci then told him that the Barcelona Golf Club, in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, had freed up one of its own spaces to install several paddle tennis courts, and that a good investment would allow them to build the Ba Pádel Barcelona Golf, the setting that welcomes me this time, between forests and vineyards.
(where today there are seven paddle tennis courts, there was an Olympic swimming pool that nobody used; this new paddle tennis club was born on June 18; Marcela Ferrari, who trained the great Fernando Belasteguín and is the Italian coach, and Andrea Casal, who competed in the World Paddle Tour)
–And so I recovered my passion for sport– Gianluca Basile tells me.
"He had lost her, then?"
-I lacked something to compete, something I'm always looking for, even if I don't do it as a professional. In basketball he had already done everything. I was not satisfied being a coach, I have always preferred to be in contact with the ball. And I had to do something to not get fat.
(Basile is 1.92m tall, he can't give up or his knees and ankles will suffer)
-So, the paddle?
Now I play it every day. Sometimes twice a day. I have it inside and I want to continue learning. I feel like a child who dreams of flying high.
-Up to what point?
-Let's see, I'm 47 years old and I can't become a professional. But when I play, I push myself. I'm not like those who play just to have fun. But I practice it carefully, eh? If the head goes faster than the body, it's dangerous.
(sometimes he plays alongside Andrea Balducci, an Italian with contagious passions)
