NEW - Antonella Bellutti - cycling champion
Versatile athlete who excelled in several sports
Olympic cycling champion Antonella Bellutti, one of Italy’s most versatile and pioneering athletes, was born on this day in 1968 in Bolzano, the principal city of Trentino-Alto Adige, also known as Südtirol. At the peak of her track cycling career, Bellutti won Olympic gold medals in the individual pursuit at the Atlanta Games of 1996 and in the points race at the Sydney Games four years later. She was also a medallist in pursuit at the 1996 and 1995 world championships and won gold in the omnium at the 1998 European championships in Berlin. Yet her cycling career may well not have happened but for a knee injury that curtailed her career as a track and field athlete. As a teenager, she had excelled as a hurdler and in combined events such as heptathlon, winning seven youth titles and setting the Italian junior record at 100m hurdles. Read more…
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Niccolò Machiavelli - statesman and diplomat
Dismissal gave public servant time to write about his ruthless ideas
Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the words "cunning" and "duplicity", was dismissed from office in Florence on this day in 1512 by a written decree issued by the Medici rulers. Machiavelli was forced to withdraw from public life and retired to his home in the Chianti region of Tuscany, where he wrote his most famous work, The Prince, which was to give the world the political idea of ‘the ends justify the means’. Had the Medici not distrusted him, Machiavelli might have continued to serve in Florence as a diplomat and military leader. He may never have passed on to mankind the ideas he had learnt from his work during the turbulent period in Italian history when popes and other European countries were battling against Italy’s city states for power. Read more…
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Luigi Riva - an Azzurri great
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Italy's record goalscorer and hero of Cagliari
Luigi 'Gigi' Riva, who was born on this day in 1944, is widely regarded as one of the finest strikers in the history of Italian football. Despite playing in an era when football in Italy was notoriously defensive, he scored more than 200 goals in a 16-year club career, 156 of them in Serie A for Cagliari, with whom he won the scudetto (shield) as Italian League champions in 1970. Nicknamed "Rombo di tuono" - thunderclap - by the football writer Gianni Brera, Riva is also the all-time leading goalscorer for the Italian national team with 35 goals, his record having stood since 1974. After his playing career, Riva spent 23 years as part of the management team for the Azzurri and was a key member of the backroom staff when Italy won the World Cup for a fourth time in 2006. Born in Lombardy, not far from Lake Maggiore, Riva spent virtually his whole football career with Cagliari and made his home in Sardinia. Read more…
Gaspare Tagliacozzi - surgeon
Professor invented rhinoplasty procedure
Pioneering plastic surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi died on this day in 1599 in Bologna. During his career, Tagliacozzi had developed what became known as ‘the Italian method’ for nasal reconstruction. He improved on the procedure that had been carried out by the 15th century Sicilian surgeons, Gustavo Branca, and his son, Antonio. Tagliacozzi wrote a book, De Curtorum Chirugia per Insitionem - On the Surgery of Mutilation by Grafting - which described in great detail the procedures carried out in the past to repair noses amputated during battle. Surgeons who came after him credit him with single-handedly revolutionising the procedure and inventing what is today referred to as a rhinoplasty procedure. Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna in 1545. He studied medicine, natural sciences and anatomy at the University of Bologna. Read more…
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Feast day of Ercolano – patron saint of Perugia
Bishop was martyred after trying to save city
Today sees the Umbrian city of Perugia celebrate one of the two annual feast days of its patron saint, Ercolano, who according to legend was martyred on this day in 549 at the hands of the Ostrogoths, who ruled much of Italy at that time and had placed the city under siege. Herculanus, as he is also known, was the Bishop of Perugia and as such was charged with trying to bring comfort to his flock in the face of inevitable capture by the Ostrogoths, the tribe, thought to have originated in Scandinavia, which had swept into Italy at the beginning of the sixth century. They had a large, well-equipped army – more powerful than the army Perugia possessed, although it had enough soldiers to deter an advance – and the Ostrogoth leader, Totila, was prepared to wait outside the walls of the city for as long as it would take to starve the population into surrender. Read more…
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Book of the Day: Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport, by Simon Martin
Simon Martin is the author of Football and Fascism: The National Game under Mussolini, which won the Lord Aberdare Prize in 2004. He holds a PhD from University College, London and has taught there, as well as at the University of Hertfordshire, the University of California, Rome programme, the New York University in Florence and the American University of Rome.
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