Raimondo D’Inzeo – Olympic showjumper

First athlete to compete in eight consecutive Games

Raimondo D'Inzeo always competed in
his Carabinieri uniform

Raimondo D'Inzeo, who with his older brother Piero became the first athlete to compete in eight consecutive Olympic Games, was born on this day in 1925 in Poggio Mirteto, a small town in Lazio about 45km (28 miles) northeast of Rome.

They achieved the record when they saddled up for the show jumping events in Montreal in 1976, surpassing the previous record of seven consecutive summer Games held by the Danish fencer Ivan Osiier, whose run, which began in 1908 and was interrupted twice by World Wars, had stood since 1948.

The D’Inzeo brothers, whose Olympic journey began in London in 1948 just as Osiier’s was ending, had chalked off seven Olympics in a row at Munich in 1972, when each won the last of their six medals in the team event. Raimondo had carried the Italian flag at the opening ceremony.

Their finest moment came at the 1960 Olympics in their own country, when they were roared on by a patriotic crowd at the Villa Borghese Gardens in Rome to complete a one-two in the individual event, Raimondo taking the gold medal on his horse Posillipo, Piero the silver on The Rock.

Raimondo’s other medal successes had come in Stockholm in 1956, when he won the individual silver and the team silver on Merano. He collected a team bronze on Posillipo at Tokyo in 1964 and rode Fiorello II to another team bronze in Munich.

Piero (left) and Raimondo D'Inzeo with a
teammate at the Rome Olympics in 1960

The brothers were 51 and 53 years old respectively when they competed in Munich but would probably have extended their record to nine consecutive Games but for the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

As it was, their record stood until 1996, when the Austrian sailor Hubert Raudaschi completed his ninth consecutive Games. The record for the most appearances at the summer Olympics now stands at 10, which another showjumper, Canada’s Ian Millar, achieved at London 2012, although his were not consecutive.

It could be argued that Raimondo D’Inzeo was born to ride. His father, Carlo, was chief instructor in the Royal Piedmontese Dragoons, an elite mounted regiment in the Italian army, and later dean of the equestrian faculty of the Italian sports university La Farnesina in Rome.

Raimondo did not take to riding at first, finding the whole experience frightening. When he was placed on a horse at the age of 10, he was so scared of being hurt he felt unable to move. But, listening to his father talking to his brother about horses at home every evening, he began to feel left out and decided to persevere. Eventually, he felt as comfortable in the saddle as Piero.

Nonetheless, he decided he wanted a career as an engineer and persuaded his father to let him enrol at the University of Milan.  But he had already grown to love horses and after a while would spend increasingly less time attending lectures and increasingly more time at the San Siro horse racing track, even competing in races from time to time.

Raimondo D'Inzeo with wife Giuliana pictured soon after
the medal ceremony at the 1960 Olympics

He abandoned the idea of becoming an engineer and in 1950 followed his brother into the mounted arm of the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force.  It was at the Carabinieri stables in Rome that he first encountered Merano, who would give him his first Olympic medals. The bond between the two became so close that Merano came to recognise the sound of D’Inzeo’s car as he arrived in the yard and would put his head through the stable door in anticipation of a treat.

D’Inzeo would always compete in uniform, each year with more pips as he rose eventually to the rank of General.  The mounted arm of the Carabinieri were often engaged in ceremonial roles, although that was not always the case.

In July 1960, shortly before the Olympics, he had to endure a particularly harrowing episode when he was ordered to lead a charge on horseback to break up a demonstration in Rome against the government of prime minister Fernando Tambroni. A number of people were killed and injured during the violence.

In addition to his Olympic successes, D'Inzeo was the world individual jumping champion in both 1956 and 1960, and a silver medalist in that event in 1955 and bronze medalist in 1966. He won eight International Grand Prix events between 1956 and 1975, including the Rome Grand Prix four times. He was a founding member and former President of the International Jumping Riders Club (IJRC), which was created in June 1977.

He died in November 2013 at the age of 88, leaving a widow, Giuliana Mazzetti di Pietralata, a son and a daughter. Another daughter died in a skiing accident in childhood.  Piero passed away the following February, aged 90.

The Piazza Martiri della Libertà in Poggio Mirteto as it
would have appeared while D'Inzeo was growing up

Travel tip:

D’Inzeo’s birthplace, Poggio Mirteto, a town situated on a hill overlooking the Tiber river in the province of Rieti in northern Lazio, found itself on the map in 1849 when the unification army of Giuseppe Garibaldi stopped in the town with some 4,000 men during a strategic retreat from Rome. There is a commemorative plaque marking the house where Garibaldi’s wife, Anita, who was pregnant, spent two nights. The town’s main square was subsequently renamed Piazza Martiri della Libertà.

The showjumping competitions at the 1960 Olympics took
place at the Piazza di Siena in the Villa Borghese Gardens

Travel tip:

The individual jumping and dressage events at the Rome Olympics of 1960 took place in an arena constructed at the Piazza di Siena at the Villa Borghese Gardens, which are among the city’s largest public parks. The gardens date back to 1605, when Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, began converting a former vineyard. Team jumping took place on the final day of the Games at the Stadio Olimpico, while the eventing contest was staged at the Centro Equestre Federale, in Pratoni del Vivaro, situated in the town of Rocca di Papa, not far from the pope’s traditional summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, 25km (16 miles) southeast of the capital.

More reading: 

Emilio Lunghi - Italy's first Olympic medallist

How Dorando Pietro found fame from an Olympic disqualification

Ottavio Missoni - from Olympic hurdler to fashion designer

Also on this day:

1723: The death of anatomist Antonio Maria Valsalva

1891: The birth of former prime minister Antonio Segni

1925: The birth of Olympic showjumper Raimondo D'Inzeo

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Federico Caprilli - equestrian pioneer

Study of horses revolutionised jumping techniques

Federico Caprilli in his cavalry uniform

Federico Caprilli, the Italian cavalry officer who revolutionised the way horse riders jump fences, was born on this day in 1868 in Livorno.

One of four children born to Enrico Caprilli and his wife, Elvira, Federico was bent on an army career from an early age. He enrolled as a cadet at military college in Florence at 13 years old, subsequently transferring to Rome and then Modena. He had no riding experience at the start, and when he graduated with the rank of lieutenant, though an excellent gymnast and proficient fencer, his horsemanship was marked as ‘poor’.

Nonetheless, he was assigned to the Royal Piedmont cavalry regiment, where his job, at a time when the introduction of weapons such as the Gatling Gun was negating any battlefield advantage a soldier had from being mounted, was to train horses for new combat roles, such as springing surprise attacks in difficult terrain.

It was there that he observed the way horses jumped obstacles and concluded that conventional beliefs about the way a horse should be ridden over jumps were entirely wrong.

Until Caprilli came along, it was accepted that the rider should use long stirrups and approach a fence leaning back in the saddle, legs stretched almost straight.  A sharp pull on the horse’s head was seen as the way to launch the jump.

This antique hunting scene shows a rider in typical
jumping position, leaning backwards

Antique prints of hunting scenes inevitably show the rider in this position, leaning backwards in the saddle and appearing to jump fences in hope rather than any expectation of making a safe landing.

No one questioned this, even though the riding position was essentially the same as was employed in the middle ages, when heavy suits of armour compelled the rider to sit bolt upright.  The accepted wisdom, too, was that landing on its front legs was bad for the horse, especially carrying the additional weight of a rider, and that it should be encouraged to land on its hind legs, or at least on all four legs.

In fact, horses often injured themselves as a result of this flawed technique, either through catching the obstacle with their trailing hind legs or developing back problems.  What’s more, the jab in the mouth as the rider yanked on the reins often caused them to refuse to jump.

Caprilli, who used the relatively new device of photography to underline his findings, observed that when they jumped freely, with no rider, horses always landed on their front legs and were none the worse for it.

As a result, he devised a technique whereby the rider adopted a forward position, slightly out of the saddle, his upper body in line with the horse’s neck, his centre of gravity directly over the horse’s, and with no pressure applied to the animal’s mouth.  Caprilli also instructed his riders to allow the horse to think for itself about how it approached an obstacle and when it took off.

Caprilli's technique is demonstrated perfectly
by this rider at Badminton in 2008

The results were startling. Horses were suddenly much more willing to jump obstacles and were able to negotiate banks and ditches much more nimbly than before.  In short, they were ready to operate in terrain that would previously have been off limits.

Yet far from being congratulated, Caprilli received a frosty response from his superiors, who did not take kindly to their faith in the old methods being exposed as foolish.  Rumours, which it is suspected were false, began to circulate about his private life, of romantic entanglements with aristocratic wives, and he was posted to the south of Italy, out of harm’s way.

However, he continued to hone his techniques and when word of his excellent results in equestrian competitions reached his old regiment’s headquarters in Pinerolo in Piedmont, he was summoned back.

He was made chief instructor at the Cavalry School of Pinerolo as well as its subsidiary in Tor di Quinto (near Rome). After a year of training, riders who attended the schools were able to negotiate the jumps and obstacles of the training circuit even without reins.

Soon, as the Italian cavalry began to dominate international competition, riders came from countries around the world to study Caprilli's system and it became the new standard for any form of equestrian pursuit that involved jumping.

Caprilli died in slightly mysterious circumstances in 1907, when his body was found on a cobbled path in Pinerolo.  It was suggested that he had been attacked by a jealous husband or a resentful superior but there were no obvious signs that he had met his death in that way and it was concluded that his mount must have slipped on some ice, throwing him off, and that he had hit his head on the cobbles.

The duomo in Piazza San Donato in Pinerolo

Travel tip:

Pinerolo is a beautiful town in the shadow of the alps, some 50km (31 miles) south-west of Turin.  It has a charming main square, the Piazza San Donato, overlooked by the cathedral of the same name, which dates back to the ninth century and which has a Romanesque bell tower and a Gothic façade. The church of Santa Croce, in Vicolo Barone, is another picturesque sight.

The commemorative plaque outside 115 Viale Italia

Travel tip:

In Livorno, where Caprilli was born, a commem- orative plaque marks the family home in Viale Italia, at number 115.  He was honoured in 1937 when the local horse racing track was renamed Ippodromo Federico Caprilli. At one time it boasted a fully illuminated track and could accommodate crowds of up to 10,000 spectators but it closed in 2016 after the company that owned it went out of business.

More reading:

Frankie Dettori - Milan-born jockey among all-time greats

The traditional horse race, the Palio di Siena

Luigi Beccali - Italy's first Olympic track gold medallist

Also on this day:

1848: The death of operatic genius Gaetano Donizetti


(Picture credits: Horse jumping by Henry Bucklow; Pinerolo duomo by Mattana; plaque by Piergiuliano Chesi; via Wikimedia Commons)

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