Roberta Vinci - tennis champion

Won five Grand Slam doubles titles with partner Sara Errani

Roberta Vinci won 10 singles and 25 doubles titles in her
career, reaching a Grand Slam singles final at the age of 32

The tennis player Roberta Vinci, one half of the most successful Italian women’s doubles partnerships of all time and one of only four Italian women to rank in the world’s top 10 at singles, was born on this day in 1983 in the major port city of Taranto in Puglia.

Vinci and partner Sara Errani reached the women’s doubles final at eight Grand Slam tournaments between 2012 and 2014, winning five of them.

They were the champions at the French Open and United States Open in 2012 and the Australian Open in 2013 and again in 2014. When they won the Wimbledon title in 2014 they became one of only five women’s doubles partnerships to complete a career Grand Slam of all the four majors.

The pair, who reached No 1 in the world rankings in 2012, unexpectedly ended their five-year partnership in 2015, after which Vinci focussed on singles.

Vinci and her doubles partner Sara Errani,
with whom she won five Grand Slams

Vinci’s finest achievement in singles came at the US Open in 2015, when she defeated world No 1 Serena Williams in the semi-finals before facing her compatriot and childhood friend Flavia Pennetta in the final, the first in a Grand Slam in the open era to pit one Italian against another.

Pennetta won 7-6, 6-2 but Vinci was spurred on by her achievement in reaching a Grand Slam final for the first time at 32 years old and in 2016 broke into the world’s top 10 for the first time in her career at 33 years and four days. It is the oldest at which any player has attained a top-10 ranking for the first time.

She did so on the back of winning a WTA tournament in St Petersburg, Russia, her first for three years. Errani, Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone are the other Italian women who have achieved a ranking in the top 10.

The daughter of an accountant, Vinci took up tennis at the age of just six and represented Taranto Tennis Club in numerous junior events. She and Pennetta, from Brindisi, won the women’s doubles at the Avvenire Trophy at just 14 years old.

They won the girls’ doubles at the French Open in 1999, the same year that Vinci made her professional debut.

Vinci and Flavia Pennetta show off their trophies after the
US Open women's final of 2015 in New York

The first of her 35 titles came in 2001 at the Qatar Open, when she and the French player Sandrine Testud won the women’s doubles. In all she went on to win 25 doubles titles, all but three in partnership with Errani.

Vinci won the first of her 10 singles titles at the Copa Colsanitas in Bogota, Colombia, in 2007. She was also a member of the Italian team that won the Fed Cup women’s team event on four occasions.

Unusually for a modern player, Vinci used a one-handed backhand grip and the backhand slice was one of her favourite shots. Combined with a powerful forehand and excellent court coverage, her game was often likened to that of the great German champion Steffi Graf.

After a 21-year career, Vinci retired from professional tennis at the Italian Open in 2018, bowing out before an appreciative home crowd at the Foro Italico in Rome, signing off a tearful farewell speech with the words: “From tomorrow, I am on holiday!”

Taranto's Castello Aragonese, which stands guard over
the canal linking the Mar Grande with the Mar Piccolo

Travel tip:

Taranto, a port city on the Ionian Sea which is home to Italy’s largest naval base, was once one of the largest cities in the world, founded by the Greeks in 706BC and growing so prosperous that it once had a population in excess of 300,000. It retained its status under the Roman Republic but declined under the Roman Empire after the Emperor Trajan redirected the Via Appia, which used to connect it with Rome, to Bari. Nowadays, it is still a substantial city, home to almost 200,000 people. It is built around two large bays - the Mar Grande, where the commercial port is located, and the Mar Piccolo, flanked by the historic town centre and also home to the city’s fishing fleets.  The city is notable for multiple architectural styles, including Byzantine, Saracen and Norman. The Cattedrale di San Cataldo, right in the heart of old Taranto, dates back to the 11th century and houses the relics of the city’s patron saint, Cataldo. Taranto’s other must-see monument is the Castello Aragonese, built by King Ferdinand of Aragon in the 15th century.

The uniquely ornate setting of Italy's national tennis centre
at the Foro Italico, home of the Italian Open

Travel tip:

Foro Italico, the sports complex in Rome that is the home of the Italian Open tennis championships, was built between 1928 and 1938 as the Foro Mussolini. Inspired by the Roman forums of the imperial age, its original purpose was to host the Olympic Games of 1940 as a showcase for Fascist values. In the event, the Second World War meant the 1940 Games were cancelled, although it was the main host venue for the Rome Olympics of 1960. The complex of today includes the Stadio Olimpico, home of Rome’s two major football clubs - Roma and Lazio - and the largest sports stadium in Italy, the ornate Stadio dei Marmi athletics stadium - headquarters of the Italian National Olympic Committee - and the national tennis centre, which - like the Stadio dei Marmi is surrounded by classical statues of athletes.


More reading:

Why Sara Errani can be called Italy's most successful tennis player of all time

Francesca Schiavone - the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam

How Camila Giorgi became Italy's No 1

Also on this day:

1455: The death of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico

1564: The death of Michelangelo

1967: The birth of soccer star Roberto Baggio

(Picture credits: Main picture of Roberta Vinci by Regasterios; Vinci and Errani by Marianne Bevis; Castello Aragonese by Livioandronico2013; all via Wikimedia Commons)


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Marco Galiazzo - Olympic champion

First to win gold medal for Italy in archery

Marco Galiazzo

Marco Galiazzo, the first Italian to win an Olympic gold medal in archery, was born on this day in 1983 in Ponte San Nicolò, just outside Padua.

He won the men’s individual competition at the 2004 Games in Athens at the age of 21, defeating Great Britain’s Larry Godfrey 110-108 in the semi-finals before winning the gold medal match 111-109 against 42-year-old Hiroshi Yamamoto, of Japan. Galiazzo was only one when the veteran Yamamoto competed at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Galiazzo was one of 10 Italian gold medal winners at the 2004 Olympics, in which Paolo Bettini won the men’s road race in the cycling competition and Stefano Baldini the men’s marathon.

Eight years later, at the London Games of 2012, Galiazzo won his second Olympic gold as part of the Italian team, alongside Michele Frangilli and Mauro Nespoli, that defeated the United States in the final of the team event at Lord’s Cricket Ground, where Frangilli’s 10 with the last arrow of the match clinched the title.

Marco Galiazzo in action

In between, at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, along with Nespoli and Ilario Di Buò, he had won the silver in the team event.

Galiazzo’s total of medals makes him the most successful Italian Olympic archer of all time and the only one to win two gold medals.

Encouraged by his father, Adriano, himself an archer and later Marco’s coach, he took up the sport at the age of 13 and achieved his first competitive success a year later at the Italian Youth Games.

A member of the Compagnia Arcieri Padovani team, he was selected for the Italian national team for the first time as a 16-year-old.

His achievements in his sport also include gold medals at the World archery championships and the World Cup, plus four European titles and two European indoor titles.

Galiazzo (centre) on the podium after winning the team
gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics

On the way to winning his World Cup gold in Copenhagen in 2009, Galiazzo and teammates Nespoli and di Buò set an Italian team record at a stage two match in Porec, Yugoslavia.

His gold in the World championships came in Las Vegas in 2012.

Since 2006, Galiazzo, who still lives in Padua, has been a member of the Italian air force sports section – the Centro Sportivo Aeronautica Militare – allowing him to practise full time.

Travel tip:

Ponte San Nicolò, which takes its name from the bridge crossing the Roncajette channel, part of the Bacchiglione river that connects with the Brenta, was formerly a thriving commercial centre, part of an inland port where boats would unload salt, linen and terracotta pottery among other goods. As well as Galiazzo, it is the birthplace, coincidentally, of another Italian Olympic champion, the rower Rossano Galtarossa, who won gold at the Sydney Olympics of 2000.

Prato della Valle is one of Padua's many highlights

Travel tip:

The city of Padua is especially notable for art treasures, in particular the magnificent frescoes by Giotto that adorn the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel and the frescoes by Titian in the Scuola di Sant’Antonio. A wealth of notable buildings and vibrant squares include the huge Basilica di Sant’Antonio with its seven cupolas, the vast Palazzo della Ragione with its three tiers of arches and the broad elliptical square Prato della Valle.

More reading:

How Luigi Baccali brought home Italy's first Olympic track gold

Gelindo Bordin - Italy's first Olympic marathon champion

Alberto Cova's 10k hat-trick

Also on this day:

1976: The birth of Andrea lo Cicero - rugby star turned TV presenter

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Pope John Paul II’s prison visit

Pope came face to face with his would be killer

Pope John Paul II visited Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on this day in 1983 to forgive formally the man who had tried to assassinate him.

Pope John Paul II

Two years previously the Pope had been shot and critically wounded in St Peter’s Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish member of a fascist group known as Grey Wolves.

John Paul II had been rushed unconscious to hospital with bullet wounds to the abdomen, colon and small intestine and had to have five hours of surgery to repair the damage.

Agca was caught and restrained by bystanders until the police arrived. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.

John Paul II visited Agca on 27 December 1983 in prison in Rebibbia, a suburb on the north eastern edge of Rome.

They spoke privately for about 20 minutes and afterwards the Pope said he had pardoned his would be killer.

Agca had previously escaped from a Turkish prison where he had been serving a sentence for murdering a journalist. He was deported to Turkey at the end of his jail sentence in Italy and went on to serve another ten years in prison.

On 27 December 2014, 33 years after the shooting, Agca came to the Vatican in Rome to lay white roses on Pope John Paul II’s tomb.

Pope John Paul II had died in April 2005 at the age of 84 in his private rooms in the Vatican.  He had been taken ill in February of the same year and underwent a tracheotomy. He was released from hospital but in late March developed an infection that turned into septic shock, a severe condition from which he never recovered.

The scene of the attempted assassination of
John Paul II in St Peter's Square, Rome

Travel tip:

St Peter’s Square in front of the Basilica was designed by Bernini to provide a large space where the faithful, from all over the world, could gather together. It is filled with pilgrims and visitors to Rome on Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and other important occasions when the Pope appears to address the crowd.

Travel tip:

Pope John Paul II’s tomb is on the north side of an area called the Vatican Grottoes, less than 100 feet from the tomb of Saint Peter. The grottoes are beneath the floor of St Peter’s Basilica and house the tombs of many dead popes.

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