By Giancarlo Navach
MILAN, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A group of school students from southern Italy who came up with the original sketch that inspired the mascots for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics have been offered tickets for the closing ceremony as a reward.
The mascots - a pair of stoats named Tina and Milo - have proved wildly popular, with their soft toy versions selling out in official Games stores.
The Games have been based in the north of Italy but the winning idea emerged from Taverna, a small
town of about 2,500 inhabitants located 521 metres up in the Sila mountains in the southern Calabria region.
"The concept of the stoat came entirely from the students. We worked on it for about a month," said Gabriella Rotondaro, the PE teacher who helped develop the project more than three years ago.
"It was the idea that won, not the stoat as a character. It conveyed the values of sport and inclusion, and that is why it prevailed," she added.
The students and their teachers won a competition organised by the Ministry of Education and the Milano Cortina Foundation, which reviewed around 1,600 sketches from across Italy.
The five students involved — Sara Godino, Aurora Munizza, Francesco Angotti, Federico Barra and Tommaso Pascuzzi — were around 13 at the time of the design.
As well as the tickets for the closing ceremony in Verona, they received two mascots worth about 35 euros ($41) each, some flags and Olympic-themed scarves.
Some in Italy have questioned why there was no more tangible financial reward for the school which, like many in the south, struggles with chronic structural problems.
Rotondaro was reluctant to fuel that controversy.
"Certainly, funds to improve the school building or its activities would have been appreciated, but what matters most is the recognition these five students deserve for their brilliant ideas," she said.
($1 = 0.8498 euros)
(Editing by Keith Weir and Alison Williams)
