A first in FISU Games history: para-athletes to compete in 2025 in Turin

The best paralympic student-athletes are set to participate in the Torino 2025 FISU Games under the banner of inclusiveness and social sustainability. The next winter edition of FISU’s flagship event, scheduled from 13 to 23 January 2025 in the Piedmont capital, will be the first one open to all without barriers of any kind.

The decision and announcement by the Organising Committee of the Games underlines the will of the Federation of Italian University Sport (FederCUSI) to promote concrete actions of social inclusion, through the practice of sports activities. The opportunity to hold para-snow sports competitions at the FISU Games was on the table already in the candidature phase of Torino 2025.

“For the first time paralympic athletes will be able to compete in snow sports disciplines together with able-bodied athletes. After the invention of the Universiade in 1959, this is another innovation by Turin, this time in the name of social sustainability,” said Alessandro Ciro Sciretti, President of the Torino 2025 Organising Committee.

“This is the result of two years of work with the Organising Committee and the FIS and a historic day for the entire university sports movement. We hope to expand the number of disciplines and participants in future editions,” said Milan Augustin, FISU Winter Games Director.

The president of the FederCUSI, Antonio Dima, echoes him: “Upon hearing the news of the opening to parasports at the FISU World Winter University Games, I congratulate the Torino 2025 Organising Committee and its President Sciretti for this valuable and commendable initiative. The openness to the world of disability and its inclusive current through sport represents for FederCUSI not only a founding stone of this governance but also a statutory mission that is more and more actual and witnessed. The occasion of Torino 2025 are a showcase and an international stage that gratify the choices made at national and territorial level. FederCUSI’s support for this important initiative is total”.

Paralympic champion Alessandro Daldoss (picture above), a visually impaired skier, was also delighted by the news: “This evokes great memories because I was only the forerunner with my guide at the 2013 Trentino Universiade, while now the disabled athletes will actually be able to compete on the same tracks as their able-bodied colleagues,” he said.

Information provided by Torino 2025 edited by Olivier van Bogaert