During the last thirty years historians have documented the emergence of a veritable policy for sport and physical education under the Fascist regime. Their work has improved our understanding of the main functions of physical exercise under Mussolini. While the Fascist regime aimed to monitor and control sports organisations, particularly the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) and the main sport federations, by linking them to institutions such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla or the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, it also envisioned an Italian “new man” and used sport events and azzurrisuccesses to advance the “consensus” of the thirties. But to some extent the practice of sport, either for competition or leisure, also offered spaces of relative freedom from totalitarian control.