A women’s group criticized Italy’s ski team Friday for excluding Daniela Ceccarelli from the World Championships less than three months after she gave birth to her first child.
ARE, Sweden — A women’s group criticized Italy’s ski team Friday for excluding Daniela Ceccarelli from the World Championships less than three months after she gave birth to her first child.
    The Italy-based group Telefono Rosa said the exclusion was “an attack on a woman for only one reason — maternity.”
    Ceccarelli, who won the super G at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, had a baby girl on Nov. 16 and returned to the World Cup ski circuit in mid-January. She has entered four World Cup races this season, with her best finish 17th in a super G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Jan. 19.
    Riccardo Agabio, the interim commissioner of the Italian Winter Sports Federation, said he spoke with Ceccarelli for a half-hour on Thursday to explain the decision.
    “I repeatedly explained that the decisions made by the team director Flavio Roda were exclusively based on technical criteria,” Agabio said in a statement. “There was never any discrimination made by Roda toward Daniela Ceccarelli in her role as a mother.”

— The Associated Press