KIKU Sports Academy

• Lostzone – musical highlight
• Martin Volgger – “Sports between being a pleasure and a pain“ (keynote speech)
• Simon Martinello – “Prevention and rehabilitation in high-performance sport” (keynote talk)
• Matthias Steiner – “Pull, push, fight – the tough way to the top“ (keynote talk)
• Oney Tapia – “Sowing seeds for the future” (keynote talk)

Martin Volgger is a psychotherapist (behavioural therapist and hypnotherapist) and has been working as a teacher and sport psychologist in South Tyrol for many years. He graduated in 1985 from the Austrian University of Innsbruck and started to work as a teacher the same year of his graduation. Apart from teaching, he is one of the founding members of the South Tyrolean Association for Sports Psychology and Mental Training. His first publication, entitled “Leben lernen durch Sport (learn how to live through sport)” came out in 2007. The second publication followed in 2013: “Yes I can, das geht (Yes I can, it is possible)”.

As a long-time football player, he has always been interested in the metal aspects of performance, in particular sports performance. How do people summon this kind of magical self-belief that is able to evoke incredible amounts of energy? This is the central question that still drives him to this day in trying to understand people and help them to discover new perspectives and unleash hidden energies. The numerous experiences he gained working with teams and single athletes, amateur and professional athletes as well as sports students, their trainers and their parents enable him to professionally follow those who want to rediscover and reinvent themselves in order to be more successful and, above all, to find happiness.

Simon Martinello was born in 1984 and has an impressive CV for his young age. The former player for football team FC Südtirol studied in Vienna. While he was studying for a Masters in Diagnostic and Training at the University of Munich, he was awarded with the life-changing opportunity of working as a fitness coach for the FC Bayern Munich junior team. Since 2015, the sport scientist has been working in Munich alongside one of the most famous sports doctors on earth, Dr. Müller Wohlfahrt.

Retired Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, table tennis player Dimitrij Ovtcharov, football player Bastian Schweinsteiger, Kenyan Olympic champion Vivian Cheruiyot or track and field sprinter and world record holder in the 400 metres Wayde van Niekerk, are just some of the world class athletes that Mühlbach native Simon Martinello helped to reach peak performance.

Today, Simon Martinello works as a rehabilitation trainer and athletics coach for FC Bayern Munich and also mentors/works with football star Manuel Neuer.

Oney Tapia was born on 27 February 1976 in Havana. In 2002, the Cuban baseball player came to Italy, where he successfully played for the teams Old Rags Lodi and Montorio Veronese. Not long after, he also started playing rugby. He earned his money by working as a gardener. While working as a gardener, he had an incident in 2011 that changed his life forever. Oney Tapia was hit on the head by a branch and lost his eyesight.

Nonetheless, the young athlete did not give up and started playing goalball and torball with the Oero Runners Bergamo team and approached Paralympic athletics in 2013. After winning numerous medals at European championships and world championships, on 23August 2018 he managed to win the gold medal in discus throwing F11 at the European championship in Berlin and set a new world record with 46.07 metres. He had already won the hearts of his fellow citizens in 2017, when he participated at the Italian version of the TV show “Dancing with the Stars”, winning the competition alongside his professional dancing partner Veera Kinnunen.

Matthias Steiner was born in 1982 in Vienna and started weightlifting at an early age. Soon he became an Austrian weightlifting prospect. Love took the young Austrian to Germany. His road to the top was often filled with obstacles. After his naturalisation in 2008, he became the Olympic superheavyweight champion (+105 kg) during the same year (he held the photo of his wife who had passed away in his hand) and European champion as well as world champion in 2010.

In 2013, after his weightlifting career was over, he founded his own business “Steinertainment GmbH”. Now a proud father, he works as a fitness coach and nutrition coach, writes books about nutrition and physical exercise and gives speeches about his life story, sports and the tough way to the top.

Tiziana was born in Turin in 1948. Her great passion has always been the mountains, especially Sestriére, where her father, Giovanni Nasi, was mayor for more than 30 years. Her youth was marked by culture and diverse interests, such as the “Accademia del Giardino di Paolo Pejrone”. She read a lot, was interested in classical music and lovingly cared for her dogs. But sport has always played a major role in Tiziana’s life: artistic gymnastics, golf, volleyball, but espescially mountain sports such as mountaineering and skiing.

In 1982, Tiziana Nasi started working for the Sestriéres Company, responsible for the ski lift facilities. In the same year she was elected president of the Circolo Golf Sestriéres and the Sporting Club Sestriéres, where she organized numerous sporting events. As a result she was asked to organize the first Italian Alpine skiing Championship for people with disabilities. From then, everything took its course… the Paralympic winter athletes changed her life. In 1997 she became President of the “Comitato Regionale della Federazione Italiana Sport Disabili” and until today she is the face of “FISIP – Italian Association of Paralympic Winter Sports”.

Brixen native Sarah Bernardi has studied and worked for almost ten years in Munich, Berlin and Barcelona. In 2003, she returned to South Tyrol after gaining much media and life experience. Since her return, she has been working for South Tyrolean Radio “Südtirol 1”.