A total of 403 athletes will compete for Italy at the Paris Olympics, which begin in a few days. A record for the country, which will be represented in 34 disciplines (all individual, plus volleyball and water polo, both male and female), despite the absence of team sports: no five-ring competition for football and basketball, but also for rugby, field hockey, and handball. Another record is the number of Italians of foreign origin (36, or 9% of the total); approximately half of these arrived in Italy as preschoolers and began sports right away. The statistics on "Olympic cradles," or birthplaces, are particularly interesting. For each province, the number of athletes in Paris is compared to the resident population aged 15 to 50. This year's winner is Oristano, which has less than 57 thousand inhabitants in the 15-50 age group and sends four athletes to France: in addition to Lorenzo Patta, who won gold in Japan in athletics with the 4x100 relay, there is volleyball player Alessia Orro, rower Stefano Oppo, and weightlifter Sergio Massidda. The Sardinian province comes in ahead of Livorno, which led the ranking three years ago alongside Savona and Rome, as well as the Piedmontese Verbano Cusio Ossola.
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