Marcell Jacobs, l’eroe sportivo italiano di nuova foggia e il suo rapporto con la celebrità

Abstract

The gold medal won by Marcell Jacobs at Tokyio 2020 Olympics marked a passage of cultural change for Italian sport. The first, historic  and unexpected affirmation of an Italian athlete’s prowess in the most eagerly awaited race of the Games aroused a state of  extraordinary national exaltation. It has also prompted the Italian public to possibly reject the conditioning of sporting monoculture  which assigns football the position of clear dominance in economic and media terms. A feat of such an extraordinary scale automatically  delivers the athlete to a dimension of heroism, but at the same time places him at the centre of a dilated communicative arena, within  which to manage a growth in celebrity that can generate a crisis of rejection. Referring to the reference conceptual framework on the  management of the relationship between heroism and celebrity, the essay illustrates the trajectory that leads to the affirmation of a new  national sports hero and his entry into the public scene as a character of high notoriety,