Two gold medals, three silver, one bronze. This is the balance of Italy in the 61st International Mathematics Olympiad, which took place on 21 and 22 September.
Originally scheduled for last July in Russia, in St. Petersburg, due to the health emergency this year the event has been transformed, adopting a new format. It has become an online competition distributed all over the world, to allow the greatest possible participation of female students. The Italian boys faced the competition remotely gathered in a classroom of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Apart from the venue, the competition has maintained its canonical structure: two days of competition, three problems a day, seven points up for grabs for each of the six exercises, forty-two points for a full score.
Italy, now in its 41st participation, presented a team composed of:
- ITA1: Matteo Damiano of the "Galileo Ferraris" Scientific High School in Turin;
- ITA2: Massimiliano Foschi of the "Galileo Galilei" Scientific High School of Civitavecchia (RM);
- ITA3: Giovanni Mecenero of the IIS "Leonardo da Vinci" of Arzignano (VI);
- ITA4: Romeo Passaro from the “Alessandro Volta” Scientific High School in Milan;
- ITA5: Davide Pierrat of the “Ippolito Nievo” Scientific High School of Padua;
- ITA6: Matteo Poletto of the "Jacopo Da Ponte" Scientific High School in Bassano del Grappa (VI).
Massimiliano Foschi and Matteo Poletto were on their second participation, after last year's silver in Bath, UK. Our guys were virtually accompanied by Team Leader Massimo Gobbino, by Deputy Leader Francesca Rizzo and by Observer A Roberto Dvornicich and Ludovico Pernazza.
The results, after the two days of competition, corrections and coordination between Leader and Deputy and those responsible for the problems, were excellent: Matteo Damiano and Massimiliano Foschi won gold, respectively with 33 and 32 points; Matteo Poletto, Romeo Passaro and Davide Pierrat won the silver medal, with 28 points for the first two and 27 for the third; bronze for Giovanni Mecenero, with 23 points (just one point from silver). All excellent placings that, overall, give Italy the best result in history in the ranking by nations: sixth place overall (out of 105 participating nations) tied with Poland and behind only China, Russia, United States, Korea. South and Thailand.
So far, despite excellent individual results, our country had never ranked higher than 1967th place (in 13, at the very first participation, but with only 2010 participating nations) or, more recently, 2011th place (in 95 and 101, with XNUMX and XNUMX participating nations respectively).
The Mathematics Olympics Project is promoted by the Ministry of Education and implemented by the Italian Mathematical Union through the Olympics Commission.