Thursday, 11 October 2018

UniTrento TOPSport: 15 new student-athletes join the dual career programme

More than 100 student-athletes are now enrolled at UniTrento

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TOPSport, the dual career programme of the University of Trento, sprinted off the start line and started the academic year 2018/19 with 15 new student-athletes who have just become part of the team. The programme is more and more successful because it gives young athletes the opportunity to study at university level while continuing their sport career.

There are today 38 student-athletes at UniTrento (22 males, 16 females), 102 since the launch of the programme in 2011. They are engaged in different sports and are enrolled in different courses at the University of Trento.

Among them are Fabrizio Casal, who leads his partner Giacomo Bertagnolli in alpine ski and earned several medals at the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Games, Christoph Depaoli, hockey player and member of the Italian team at the 2018 winter Paralympic Games, and Nicola Liviero, snowboarder of the Italian freestyle team. Of the students who were already part of the programme 6 recently participated in the Olympics: Ruggero Tita, sailor and student at Computer Science and telecommunications, Nacra17 world and European champion, he has earned his spot in the next Olympics; Nadya Ochner, snowboarder and law student; Riccardo Tonetti, alpine skier and economics student; Davide Ghiotto, ice skater of the humanities department, Michele Malfatti, speed skater and student of Industrial Engineering, and Andrea Pilzer, PhD student and member of the curling team.

On Wednesday 10 October the new students gathered at Collegio Bernardo Clesio for an orientation and information session on the TOPSport programme, an occasion to meet their tutors and the department delegates for sport, who will support them all along their studies.

They were welcomed by Alex Pellacani, Director General of the University of Trento, and by the Delegate for Sport, Paolo Bouquet, with the dual-career student-athletes staff.

A new round of admissions was announced for the autumn, to take in new athletes. This will be an extra opportunity to join the programme starting from the second semester of this academic year.

For more information on the programme and the next admission session visit the website

The press release contains more details on the TOPSport programme.

The dual-career programme was presented in a UniTrento booth at the Sports Festival at the Trentino Sport Tech Arena in Piazza Battisti in Trento.