When on July 30, 2006, Sandro Damilano, who had long dreamed of a means of communication through a web page for race walk in Italy, published the first news in the newly born site that then called "Marcia Italiana", had achieved in first great success.
Almost all of the second half of 2006, the news that was released was spot news, made on some races with the results.
It soon appeared that wanting to follow suit in an organized way at this new website would not have been a single person job; Sandro Damilano then turned to the undersigned that at first he had not realized how long he had taken his own life to throw in this new adventure.
Friendship towards Sandro Damilano, and especially love for race walk, pushed me to accept.
Day after day I knew I had entered a whirlwind from which to go out would have been very difficult, but I also realized we were both creating a communicative project of great interest.
We continued with the news (at that time only in Italian) until March 25, 2012 when we first decided to publish a news in English with the goal of giving greater internationality to our communicative project.
2013 was the year in which the website was renewed and 2014 was the one in which we decided to open two sections: an Italian and an English. The hard work was to retrieve all the previous news in English and allocate them manually in the new section.
Since then, the website has the current layout.
Visibility Overview
In January 2011, we started systematic survey of the website through Google Analytics.
During these seven years we recorded:
a) Over 363.600 visit sessions: an average of about 142 visits per day and 51.947 visits per year
b) There were over 127.400 users who interacted with our website, of which 65% came back to interact more than once
c) Over 1.050.000 web pages have been visited: an average of 410 pages visited every day and 150.000 pages visited annually
d) The average length of the reading session is almost 2:30 per session
How to say that on average you have dedicated to the reading of Marcia dal Mondo over 15 hours of your entertainment business ... hopefully it was worth it.
The day with the historical record of visits was that of Jan. 9, 2015 (1.989 sessions of visit per day) when we published the news of Elena Lashmanova's participation on Dec. 30, 2014 at a indoor in Saransk (RUS).
It follows on Aug. 27, .2013 (869 sessions of visits per day) when two news reports were published simultaneously: one concerning an incident that occurred in Italy during a training session and in which a tragedy had been trapped and the other referred to the aggravated state of health by Jerzy Hausleber.
The third most readable news (830 sessions of visit per day) was that of June 22, 2014 when the news of the positivity to GW501516 by Elena Lashmanova was given.
Fortunately, in the last two years the most important news was those of the “walked” race walk and not those related to doping.
On Aug. 19, 2016, the 20km race at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games recorded 696 visits a day, while on Aug. 13, 2017, the "full day immersion" at the World Championships in London recorded 729 visits a day.
The great development
But they have been the last four years those of great development.
We would like to remind you that from January 1, 2014 up today we recorded:
a) Over 243.000 visit sessions: an average of about 166 visits per day and 60.750 visits per year
b) There were over 85.600 users who interacted with our website, of which 67% came back to interact more than once
c) Over 650.600 web pages have been visited: an average of 446 pages visited every day and 162,650 pages visited annually.
In the last four years the top twenty countries that visited our site are the following
The visits to the web-site from Italy, which in 2006 represented 100% of our activity in the last four years are reduced to just over 45%, while the internationality of the site has become increasingly important. In 2017 only less than 36% of our readers are Italian.
This gratifies us and the choice we made a few years ago to open up more to international business has been largely repaid.
What we did not do
Although we have tried the “Trainings" section several times, it is the great defeat of our website.
Very few are the coaches who wanted to collaborate with us to enrich what we believe can be a utility for everyone.
Our most thankful thanks to them.
What do we think we did right
In our opinion, in addition to the news section that is certainly the heart of the site, we are going to highlight what we did in the "History" section (with all the detail subsections) and in the "Athletes" section (Italians, Foreigners, and Hall of Fame for both men and women).
We do not hide that the search for results by Sandro Damilano, who cares for this section, is not a small thing.
In particular we like to remember in these two sections the graphic reports that are a valid support for those wishing to deepen their knowledge on the movement of race walking. They are updated in the History section after each major event and in the Athletes section every year at the and of the season.
For nearly two years we have launched a Facebook Group called “Marcia dal Mondo Friends”, where we immediately publish the link of our news; we believe with this small tool to speed up the spread of news and other topics of general interest.
During these years we have always tried to provide the news with no comments that could hurt the susceptibility of someone trying to privilege the news with respect to our personal feelings.
If we sometimes did not, we apologize for it; we also have a soul and a heart that we must try to keep hold of.
Of course, however, we will never be like those who turn to an audience telling what they believe the audience wants to hear. If we did that we would end the possibility of intervening in doing something important for the help towards the specialty of race walking.
But what we are particularly happy about is giving you the results and a brief chronicle of the four stages of "Around Taihu" for four days in a row, almost in real time, during past five years. Believe it was not easy.
Today and tomorrow
Today we have reached and celebrate the news no. 3.000 !
That's I’d like to dedicate the cover photo to us two.
Up to you to decide if we have worked well.
Certainly we could have done better, but believe that only this was a great effort.
This has led us several times (even today) to a series of pauses of reflection: to continue with the help of the usual friends in the world to find the facts and moments we feel most interesting and to informo you, or whether to limit ourselves to make the point of the most important events abandoning the least important part of our communicative project. At the moment we will continue as usual
In any case, if anyone likes to be part of the collaborator team, even just as a provider of news and results, he only has to contact us.
Anyway, if you keep reading, it will be the best thanks for us.
For my part, let me publicly thank Sandro Damilano who wanted me alongside in this adventure and that helped me and spurred me in these over 10 years even when the desire and the interest, for various reasons, both personal and family, was falling.
Without his initial idea and his support, probably Marcia dal Mondo would not have reached the current goals.
Nicola Maggio
Amministrator of the web site: Marcia dal Mondo