Donatella Sacchi
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| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Italian |
| Born | 16 July 1959 Novara, Italy |
| Height | 164 cm (5 ft 5 in) |
| Sport | |
| Sport | Artistic Gymnastics |
Donatella Sacchi (born 16 July 1959) is an Italian former gymnast. She competed at the 1976 Summer Olympics.[1] At the 2020 Summer Olympics, she served as the president of the superior jury evaluating women's artistic gymnastics.[2]
Donatella Sacchi was born in 1959 to her parents Mariuccia and Davide, who were the founders and owners of Libertas Ginnastica, a gymnastics gym in Novara.[3][4] She has a brother named Andrea who was also a gymnast. He is the coach of Italian gymnast Enrico Pozzo.[4]
Her husband, Massimo Contaldo, owns the Quisquash gym in Novara and is the team manager of Italy's women's gymnastics team.[5]
Sacchi speaks Italian, English, Russian, German, and French.[6]
Athletic career
At the junior level, Sacchi won gold in the all-around at the Italian championships in 1973.[6]
As a gymnast competing at the senior level, Sacchi placed 9th in the all-around at the Italian Championships in 1975.[7] In the same year, she also won a gold medal at the 1975 Mediterranean games in the team event.[3] She placed 13th in the all-around.[8]
At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, she placed 71st in the individual all-around and did not qualify for finals.[9] In the team event, Italy scored 365.100 points, putting them last, in 12th place behind the Netherlands.[10][9]
Career in gymnastics
Italian national team
After retiring from competing in 1976, she became the national coach for the junior and senior Italian teams for women's artistic gymnastics in 1977.[6] She continued to be the coach until 1984. In January 2005, she was put in charge of the Italian national teams.[6]
Judging and work at the FIG
Sacchi began judging women's artistic gymnastics internationally in 1993.[6] In 2004, she was selected to judge women's artistic gymnastics at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.[11] Following the Olympics, she joined the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) as a member of the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee. In 2016, she was elected uncontested as president of the technical committee where she has been appointed since.[12]
In 2021, Sacchi began chairing the new Safeguarding Working Group within the FIG, a working group aiming to promote gymnast welfare in the sport.[13][14]
During the floor exercise bronze medal controversy at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the implicated gymnasts representing Romania, Ana Bărbosu and Sabrina Voinea, along with the Romanian Gymnastics Federation launched a dispute against Sacchi and the FIG at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).[15] The dispute resulted in a reallocation of the bronze medal from Jordan Chiles to Bărbosu.[16] In the ruling, Sacchi was found to have acted reasonably in accepting Chiles' inquiry and that the responsibility for the error was to be placed on the FIG, and not Sacchi.[17][18]
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