Today, at CONI's Salone d’Onore, CONI President Giovanni Malagò held a lectio magistralis for students of Link Campus University, on the theme "Building the dossier on the Olympic candidature of Rome 2024". The event was attended by IOC member Mario Pescante, the General Coordinator for Rome 2024 Diana Bianchedi and various Federation Presidents and representatives of the sporting world.

Here follow some of the salient moments of the speech. "I would like to express my satisfaction for the entry of Diana Bianchedi in the Committee, thanking at the same time Claudia Bugno for her efforts during the months in which she worked on the project. A new and important professional path has opened up for her. Rome 2024 is being given great credibility abroad and were clearly proud of this: thanks to Giulio Onesti and my predecessors, CONI is considered a model, for its history and for the tradition that we uphold. We are the fifth nation of all times in terms of the number of Olympic medals gained, both in the summer and winter Olympic Games. The entrance of Diana confers to the candidature an even more sports-oriented connotation, following a very appreciated setup within IOC, especially in consideration of the prominent personalities connected to other candidatures: Hamburg, before its withdrawal, Paris, Budapest and partly also Los Angeles are represented by highly esteemed former champions, either directly in the Committee or indirectly amongst International Olympic Committee members. Abroad we are also singled out because our country is proposing it candidature in a spirit of unity. We are like a granite block, considering that our first supporters are President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who have not made any cuts to the sport budget, demonstrating great sensitivity and attention towards us, in addition to instituting a fund for facility design and installation in the suburbs and launching a strong signal on the ISTAT (Italian National Institute for Statistics) front. And then we have Luca di Montezemolo, who is known worldwide and has important expertise in the sporting world, from "Azzurra" at the 1990 World Cup - for which a lot of discussion was centred around tenders but he did not engage with such aspects and was praised through the many endorsements from the world of sport - until the experience with Ferrari. He is a citizen of the world and is held in great consideration.

Rome 2024 started with these premises, I promised that we would have an "in house" committee and we are the sole organisation with this status. I asked CONI Servizi to have customised premises and today our headquarters are the most fascinating within the Foro Italico Park. It is functional and fits in one of the three clusters that characterise the dossier, and this has a significant specific weight, as that of the spending review. Indeed, in the end we will be spending less than half of what our competitors will and a third less than another competitor, without forgetting the support of sponsors such as BNL, Alitalia, Unipol and others that will soon join us on this journey. On the 14th, the new logo will be launched at the Palazzetto dello Sport, with testimonials, and in the first weeks of 2016 we will go to Lausanne. The bid is built around three clusters, in public areas with no expropriations of any kind: Foro Italico Park, Tor Vergata and Fiera di Roma (Rome Fair). We reasoned that athletics, tennis and water disciplines could not coexist in the same area: for this reason, the Foro Italico will certainly host the water disciplines, following tradition. It is easier - in compliance with the dictates of the 2020 Agenda - to construct temporary structures for other disciplines. The Olympic Village will be at Tor Vergata, at the site of an unfinished construction work, destined to host around 17,000 people. We will meet Calatrava in January, with Montezemolo and Bianchedi, there is great availability to meet the needs of the candidature. The third area is Fiera di Roma, which can host fencing, weights, wrestling, boxing and maybe karate. There will then be a basin for rowing, not far from the Airport. It will be the only facility with these features aside from the seaplane base, and could potentially host also disciplines that at the moment are not part of the Olympic program. We have met all environmental associations, I am in constant contact with them, no proposal connected to the dossier has been made without their prior agreement. With a focus on refurbishment, you might have noted that nobody has raised issues of any kind. Finally there is the Velodrome issue: I support this to be final, even if Agenda 2020 allows for great flexibility. Sailing is a separate issue: we will refer the decision to an ISAF Committee, thanks to President Carlo Croce. There are two locations being considered, both with great tangible credentials.

At the moment we all have 25% chance, it would be a great mistake to underestimate the other candidatures. I think we will go to the photo-finish, head to head: we will win with the votes of the others when they drop out. The second or maybe the third vote will be the decisive one, and for this reason relations and balances are important, together with the credibility of our words and being able to keep our commitments. Someone says that the Olympic movement is in crisis. However, I have seen the figures of the television rights and if someone has made an investment 12 years in advance, they know exactly the type of product that they can get. Rome 2024 is a great bet, but we are playing it to the fullest. We are talking about 170,000 jobs during seven years from the moment of assignment to the lighting of the tripod. These are short term positions, and there will be 15,000 people that could find a professional place on the back of the Games, starting from facility management. The survey aspect: there is no will not to do it, and there is no shrewdness attached to it. Our regulations do not envisage it, but rest assured that we will not shy away from being assessed, there are sample investigations, we will go to the suburbs".