Dorando Pietri - marathon runner

Athlete who made his fortune from famous disqualification

Dorando Pietri with the silver cup
presented to him by Queen Alexandra

The athlete Dorando Pietri, who found fame and fortune after being disqualified in the 1908 Olympic marathon, was born on this day in 1885 in Mandrio, a hamlet near Carpi, in Emilia-Romagna.

In an extraordinary finish to the 1908 race in London, staged on an exceptionally warm July day, Pietri entered the White City Stadium in first place, urged on by a crowd of more than 75,000 who were there to witness the finish, only for his legs to buckle beneath him.

He was helped to his feet by two officials only to fall down four more times before he crossed the finish line.  Each time, officials hauled him to his feet and walked alongside him, urging him on and ready to catch him if he fell.  The final 350 yards (320m) of the event accounted for 10 minutes of the two hours, 54 minutes and 46 seconds recorded as his official time.

Eventually, a second athlete entered the stadium, the American Johnny Hayes, but Pietri had staggered over the line before he could complete the final lap.

The American team was already unpopular with the British crowd, partly because of a row about a flag at the opening ceremony. They lost even more support after they lodged an objection to the result. 

Pietri, a small man of 5ft 2ins who looked older than his 22 years, was hailed for his pluckiness by the White City crowd, who felt he deserved the gold medal.  But the Games organisers were obliged to uphold the American complaint, on the grounds that the Italian had received assistance.

Pietri races ahead of the field in
the 1908 Olympic Marathon

The outrage at this decision extended even as far as the British Royal Family.  Queen Alexandra had taken a particular interest in the race, even arranging for the start line, originally set for a street outside Windsor Castle, to be moved inside the castle grounds so that her children could watch. This extended the distance to 26 miles 385 yards, which has remained the official distance for marathons ever since.

Inside the stadium, with the finishing line placed directly in front of the Royal Box, Queen Alexandra is said to have been so thrilled to see Pietri stagger across the line and be acclaimed the winner that she joined the applause of the crowd by banging her umbrella on the floor of the box.

When she learned he had been disqualified, the story goes that she was so disappointed on his behalf that she insisted his efforts be recognised and arranged for a silver and gilt cup to be inscribed, which she presented to him during the closing ceremony.

This gesture caught the public imagination to such a degree that the Daily Mail began a fund for him, which the celebrated author Arthur Conan Doyle, who had been commissioned by the newspaper to write a report of the race, launched by donating five pounds.

The Mail told its readers that money raised would help Pietri, a pastry chef by trade, to open a bakery in Carpi. In the event, the appeal realised £300, which in 1908 was a sum comparable with more than £28,000 today.

Pietri is helped across the line at the finish of the race

With that money and his subsequent earnings as a professional – he was invited to compete in lucrative races all over the world, including a 22-race tour of the United States – he was able eventually to open an hotel.

Apart from making his fortune, cashing in on celebrity status that extended even to having a song written about him by Irving Berlin, Pietri was able to use his American tour to remove any doubt that he was a worthy winner in London.

In a rematch staged over 262 laps of a special track built at Madison Square Garden in New York in November, 2008, in front of a 20,000 crowd, Pietri defeated Johnny Hayes, repeating the win four months later.  In all the Italian won 17 of the 22 races on the tour.

Pietri retired from competition in 1911, after a career lasting just seven years, which had been interrupted by two years of national service.

Sadly, the Grand Hotel Dorando in Carpi was not a success and in time was closed, after which Pietri moved to the Ligurian resort of San Remo, where he ran a taxi business until he died in 1942, having suffered a heart attack.

The Piazza Martiri is Italy's third largest square

Travel tip:

Carpi, situated 18km (11 miles) north of Modena in the Padana plain, became a wealthy town during the era of industrial development in Italy as a centre for textiles and mechanical engineering. Its historic centre, which features a town hall housed in a former castle, is based around the Renaissance square, the Piazza Martiri, the third largest square in Italy. Italy’s national marathon has finished in Carpi in 1988 in honour of Dorando Pietri, who is also commemorated with a bronze statue by the sculptor Bernardino Morsani, erected in 2008 on the 100^th anniversary of the London Olympic marathon, at the junction of Via Ugo da Carpi and Via Cattani, about 2.5km (1.5 miles) from the centre of the town.

Luxury yachts in the harbour at San Remo

Travel tip:

San Remo, the main resort along Liguria’s Riviera dei Fiori – Riviera of Flowers – is a town steeped in old-fashioned grandeur with echoes of its heyday as a health resort in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, with broad streets lined with palm trees and luxury villas.  The harbour is still filled with expensive yachts and the casinos attract wealthy clientele. San Remo also has an old town of narrow streets and alleyways and is famous as the home of an annual pop music contest, the Sanremo Festival, where winning is still a considerable career advantage for up-and-coming Italian performers.

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Francesca Porcellato - Paralympian

Life of sporting excellence born of horrific accident

Francesca Porcellato has competed at seven
summer and three winter Paralympic Games 

Francesca Porcellato, one of Italy’s most enduring Paralympians, was born on this day in 1970 in Castelfranco Veneto.

She has competed in seven summer Paralympics as an athlete and cyclist and three winter Paralympics in cross-country skiing, winning a total of 14 medals, including three golds.

At the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, Canada, she was flag-bearer for the Italian team.

She is also a prolific wheelchair marathon competitor, sharing with America’s Tatyana McFadden the distinction of having won the London Marathon wheelchair event four times.

Even as she reaches the age of 47, Francesca is still at the top of her sport. Only last weekend in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa, she won gold in the H3 event at the Paracycling road world championships.

The H3 category – for paraplegic, tetraplegic or amputees unable to ride a standard bicycle – involves competitors riding in a lying position, using their arms to turn the wheels.

Francesca in her racing wheelchair

Francesca was the defending champion in the H3 after winning gold at the 2015 championships in Nottwil in Switzerland, where she also took gold in the time trial.

Francesca has been disabled since the age of just 18 months, having been run over by a truck in the driveway of her house.

She suffered multiple broken bones – in her words ‘everything except my head and arms’ – but miraculously no internal injuries. Yet the damage to her spinal cord meant she would never walk again.

Rehabilitation was a long process. It took many years for her to walk with a frame and she was six years old before she was given a wheelchair.  Once she was able to propel herself with her arms, however, she soon became keen to go faster and dreamed of becoming an athlete.

Although competition for disabled athletes was not nearly as well established as it is today when Francesca developed her ambition to race, there had been organised events since 1948 and the Paralympics, which had been originally conceived for war veterans, was officially launched in Rome in 1960.

They have been staged every four years since 1960, and since 1988 in Seoul, South Korea have been held in conjunction with the Olympic Games themselves, using the same facilities and following on immediately afterwards.

Francesca has excelled on skis too

It was in Seoul that Francesca, just turned 18, made her Paralympic debut as a wheelchair athlete.

Her success was immediate, with gold medals in both the individual 100m and 4 x 100m relay.  Noting her red hair, The Italian media nicknamed her La Rossa Volante – the Flying Redhead.

Winning three silver medals for good measure, in the 200m, 4 x 200m and 4 x 400m, she was among the medals again in Barcelona again four years later, taking bronze in the 400m on her 22^nd birthday.

She competed in the summer Paralympics until 2008, also picking up medals in 2000 in Sydney and 2004 in Athens.

At the same time, she was developing as a marathon wheelchair runner, in which she also enjoyed spectacular success, winning in London four times in a row from 2003 to 2006 and also taking the top prize in New York, Boston and Paris.

She competed in the winter Games for the first time in 2006, when it was hosted in Turin, as a cross-country skier.

Her big moment in the winter games came in 2010 in Vancouver, when she won the 1km sprint, a victory made even more special for falling on March 21 – the anniversary of her accident – which she regards as her second ‘birthday’.

Francesca says that she looks upon the date as a special day now because “it was the moment I became stronger – strong enough to achieve a beautiful life and realise my dreams.”

She is married to her coach, Dino Farinazzo, and lives now in Valeggio sul Mincio, a town in the province of Verona not far from Lake Garda.

The western gate of Castelfranco Veneto

Travel tip:

Castelfranco Veneto, a small town midway between Treviso and Vicenza in the Veneto region, is notable for its fortified old city, which lies at the centre of the town surrounded by high walls and a moat. Inside are a number of streets and the old city’s Duomo, which contains an altar piece by the town’s most famous son, the High Renaissance artist Giorgione, thought to have been painted between 1503 and 1504. Next to the Duomo is the Casa Giorgione, thought to have been the artist’s home, which is now a museum.

Valeggio's trademark dish tortellini in brodo

Travel tip:

Valeggio sul Mincio, situated on the Mincio river about 10km (6 miles) from Lake Garda, is an attractive town in the western part of the Veneto towards the border with Lombardy. Interesting sights included the 650-metre long Visconti Bridge, which is actually a fortified dam built in 1393, the Castello Scagliero and the Villa Sigurtà, which is surrounded by a vast area of parklands.  Veleggio is also renowned as the town in which the navel-shaped stuffed pasta tortellini was invented, although Castelfranco Veneto makes a similar claim.

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Pietro Mennea – Olympic sprint champion

200m specialist won gold at Moscow in 1980

Pietro Mennea at his first Olympics in 1972

Pietro Mennea, one of only two Italian sprinters to win an Olympic gold, was born on this day in 1952 in the coastal city of Barletta in Apulia.

Mennea won the 200m final at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, depriving Britain's Allan Wells of a sprint double. In doing so, Mennea emulated his compatriot, Livio Berruti 20 years earlier in Rome.

He held the world record at 200m for almost 17 years, from 1979 until 1996.  His time of 19.72 seconds remains the European record.

It would stand as the world record for 16 years, nine months and 11 days, until Michael Johnson ran 19.66 at the US Olympic trials in 1996.

As well as winning his gold medal, outrunning Britain’s Allan Wells in the last 50m, Mennea’s other great Olympic feat was to reach the 200m final at four consecutive Games, the first track athlete to do at any distance. He also won the bronze medal in Munich in 1972, was fourth in 1976 at Montreal and seventh place in Los Angeles in 1984.

At his last Olympics, in 1988, he carried the Italian flag at the opening ceremony.

Famous for his rather frantic running style, Mennea set the 200m record on September 12 1979 at the World University Games in Mexico City, his time surpassing the record of 19.83, set by the American sprinter Tommie Smith on the same track at the 1968 Olympics.

Pietro Mennea gets down to his mark at the start of his duel
with Allan Wells (left) in the 1980 Moscow final

Although there were some who questioned the authenticity of the record because of the advantages of lower air resistance at high altitudes, Mennea won plenty of races at low altitudes as well.

Known in Italy as “la freccia del sud”  - “the arrow of the south” – he also won gold at the European Championships in Rome in 1974 and Prague in 1978, where he also took the gold in the 100m.

Mennea was born in Barletta, on the Adriatic coast, the son of a tailor. When he was young, the story goes, he would bet against car owners that he could take on their Alfa Romeos and Porsches over 50 metres and win.

Blessed with such pace, it didn't take him long to make an impact on the track. He was a double Italian champion at 19 in 1971. The 1972 Olympics at Munich, where he won a bronze medal, was his first international championship.

His career was not without controversy. After retiring, Mennea admitted taking supplements of human growth hormone, though he added that it was not illegal at the time.

After retiring from sprinting, Mennea drew on the extensive qualifications he acquired as a student, including degrees in political science, law, physical education and literature.  He had been a student at the University of Bari at the time when Aldo Moro, who had been prime minister of Italy and would be again, was a professor.

Mennea was a politician in later life

He practised as a lawyer and a sports agent, working for some years on behalf of the football team, Salernitana. He was an elected politician, serving from 1999 to 2004 as a member of the European parliament, where he lobbied for independent dope-testing authorities in sport.

Mennea also stood at the 2001 general election is a candidate for the Senate in Barletta-Trani under the centre-left Italy of Values banner but was not elected. In 2002 he was a candidate for mayor of Barletta with the centre-right party Forza Italia, but was defeated in the first round.

He died in 2013 aged only 60 after a battle with cancer. Hundreds of Italian athletics fans filed past his open coffin and the headquarters of the Italian Olympic committee in Rome, where World Cup winner Dino Zoff and Olympic boxing champion Nino Benvenuti were among those who paid their respects.  His funeral took place at the Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill, not far from the Circus Maximus.

The Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome

Travel tip:

Santa Sabina is perched high above the Tiber river, next to small public park Giardino degli Aranci (Garden of Oranges), which has a scenic terrace overlooking Rome. The oldest extant Roman basilica in Rome, dating back to the fifth century, it preserves its original colonnaded rectangular plan and architectural style, which is said to represent the crossover from a roofed Roman forum to the churches of Christendom.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Barletta

Travel tip:

Mennea’s home city of Barletta lies about 60km (37 miles) north of Bari on the Adriatic coast. It is a working port with modern suburbs and an attractive historic centre, where one of the most famous sights is an ancient bronze 'Colossus', thought to be the oldest surviving bronze Roman statue. The identity of the figure the statue represents is not clear but one theory is that it is the Byzantine Emperor Marcian and that the statue’s original home was in Constantinople.  Barletta has a beautiful 12th century cathedral, renovated in the 14th century, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

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Deborah Compagnoni - Olympic skiing champion

Alpine ace won gold medals in 1992, 1994 and 1998

Deborah Compagnoni on the podium after
winning gold at Lillehammer in 1994

The three-times Olympic skiing champion Deborah Compagnoni was born on this day in 1970 in Bormio, northern Lombardy.

Regarded as the greatest Italian female skier of all-time, she won gold medals at the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics.

Despite suffering two serious cruciate ligament injuries, she also won multiple events at the Alpine Skiing World Cup between 1992 and 1998.

Born in Bormio but raised in Santa Caterina di Valfurva, in Valtellina, Compagnoni’s talent became obvious at a young age but she began suffering injuries also at an early age.

At just 16 years old she won the bronze medal in the downhill at the World junior championships in 1987, and the following year won the junior title in giant slalom and achieved her first podium in the World Cup.

However, shortly afterwards she broke her right knee at Val d'Isére downhill, the first of a number of major injuries, but for which she could have attained even greater success.

Compagnoni in downhill action

Compagnoni won her first race in the World Cup in 1992, in the super-G. She also won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics of the same year, again in the super-G, at Albertville in France. A day later, while racing the giant slalom, she shattered her left knee.

Nonetheless, she still achieved 16 race victories in World Cup events in addition to the giant slalom at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, a feat she repeated four years later in Nagano. In 1998 she won also a silver medal in the slalom, finishing second by only 0.06 seconds.

Her record is so impressive that she is considered the equal of Italy’s most decorated male skiers, such as Gustav Thöni and Alberto Tomba. The World Cup skiing track in her native Santa Caterina Valfurva has been named after her.

She is married to Alessandro Benetton, the son of Benetton co-founder Luciano Benetton.

Benetton is a winter sports coach and former chairman of the Benetton Group and of Benetton Formula One as well as one of the pioneers of private equity in Italy.

He and Compagnoni have three children - Agnese, Tobias and Luce. They live in Ponzano Veneto, about six kilometres ( 3.7 miles) north-west of Treviso and about 30km (19 miles) north of Venice.

The Villa Minelli in Ponzano Veneto

Travel tip:

Ponzano Veneto is a community of some 12,500 residents that essentially brings together three villages. The area is known for its elegant villas, including the Villa Minelli, which has been the main headquarters of the Benetton Group since the 1980s, having been in the family since 1969. There are a number of churches containing works of art by Sebastiano Santi and Antonio Zanchi, while the Villa Corner has frescoes by Giovan Battista Tiepolo.

The mountain backdrop to Santa Caterina

Travel tip:

Santa Caterina, where Compagnoni was brought up, is a ski resort in Valtellina, about 13km (8 milles) from Bornio in the northern part of Lombardy, less than 30km from the border with Switzerland. It is also the home town of Achille Compagnoni, a cousin of Deborah Compagnoni, the mountaineer who was the first to conquer K2, the mountain on the Pakistan-China border that is the second highest in the world.

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Stefano Baldini - Olympic marathon champion

Won gold medal over historic course in Athens

Stefano Baldini, Italy's fastest
marathon runner to date

Stefano Baldini, the marathon runner who was Olympic champion in Athens in 2004 and twice won the European marathon title, as born on this day in 1971 in Castelnovo di Sotto, about 14km (nine miles) north-west of the city of Reggio Emilia.

Although Baldini’s class was not doubted, his Olympic gold was slightly tarnished by an incident seven kilometres from the finish when a spectator broke through the barriers and attacked the Brazilian runner, Vanderlei de Lima, who was leading the field.

The spectator, an Irishman called Conelius Horan who had disrupted the British Grand Prix motor race the previous year, was wrestled off de Lima by another spectator but the incident cost the Brazilian 15 to 20 seconds and much momentum. He was passed subsequently by Baldini and finished third.

Baldini finished the race, which followed the historic route from Marathon to Athens, in two hours 10 minutes and 55 seconds, although this was not the fastest time of his career.

His best was the 2:07:56 he clocked at the 1997 London Marathon, when he finished second, in what is still the fastest time by an Italian over the marathon distance.

Baldini comes from a family of 11 children, among whom he has two brothers who were distance runners, Marco once achieving a time of 2:16:32 in the marathon. Throughout his career he has run in the colours of the Calcestruzzi Corradini Rubiera club, based in the town of Rubiera, midway between Reggio Emilia and Modena.

Stefano Baldini (left) passes the Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima
on the way to winning the 2004 Olympic marathon in Athens

He began racing over long distances even as a teenager. Initially his specialities were the 5,000m and 10,000m and he was 24 before he took on his first marathon, when he finished sixth in the Venice Marathon in 2:11:01.

Before winning his Olympic gold in Athens had already taken part in the marathon in Sydney in 2000, having competed at 5,000m and 10,000m at the Atlanta Games in 1996, making the semi-finals in the former.

He took the gold medal in the half-marathon at the World championships in 1996 in Palma de Mallorca.

His first important marathon victory came at the European championships in 1998 in Budapest.  He won the Rome Marathon in the same year.

Baldini won a second European gold eight years later in Gothenburg. His best performances over the marathon distance in the World championships came in Edmonton in 2001 and Paris in 2003, taking the bronze medal on each occasion.

Stefano Baldini in action in the
New York marathon

He went to Beijing in 2008 to defend his Olympic title but after finishing 12^th he announced his retirement, having the same year competed in his ninth London Marathon, in which he also came home 12^th.  By then Baldini was 37, although he did attempt a comeback in 2010 before announcing that he would be giving up for good and concentrating on his work with the Italian Athletics Federation.

In 2014, by which time he had become established as the technical director for youth athletics in Italy, Baldino took part in a charity event to mark the 10^th anniversary of his Athens victory, which made him the second Italian, after Gelindo Bordin, to win an Olympic marathon gold.

Married to the former 400m runner Virna de Angeli, he lives today in Rubiera with his wife and three children, Alessia, Laura and Lorenzo.

The Via Appia forms Rubiera's porticoed main street

Travel tip:

The town of Rubiera was established in around 1200 when a castle was built to protect the city of Modena. It sits alongside the Secchia river and flanks the Via Appia. The castle became a prison at the time the town was owned by the Este family. It was sold at auction in 1873, half becoming private property and half taken on by the municipal authorities.  Today very little remains of the original structure.  The town itself is characterised by streets lined with porticoes.  Notable buildings include the 15^th century Palazzo Sacrati and the art nouveau Teatro Herberia.

Travel tip:

Castelnovo di Sotto, a community of around 8,000 people in the Po Valley, is famous as the home of one of Italy’s most ancient carnivals, dating back to the 16^th century, and the birthplace of Luigi Melegari, one of the founders of the Young Italy movement alongside Giuseppe Mazzini and an important figure in the Risorgimento.

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Zeno Colò - Olympic skiing champion

Downhill ace reached speeds of almost 100mph with no helmet

Zeno Colò, pictured on the way to his 1947
skiing world speed record

Zeno Colò, the first Italian to win an Olympic alpine skiing title when he took the downhill gold at the 1952 Oslo Winter Games, died on this day in 1993, aged 72.

The winner, too, of the downhill and giant slalom World championship titles in Aspen in 1950, Colò achieved his success during a brief window in a life spent on skis.

Deprived of prime competitive years by the Second World War, part of which he spent as a prisoner of war, he began his career late, in 1947 at the age of 27, only to be banned for life in 1954 under the strict rules defining amateur status after he endorsed a brand of ski boots and a ski jacket.

Colò was born in Tuscany but in a mountainous part of the region in the village of Cutigliano, which is 678m (2,044ft) above sea level and is just 14km (9 miles) from Abetone, one of the largest ski resorts in the Apennines, with more than 50km (31 miles) of ski slopes, several of which were designed by Colò himself.

He began competitive skiing at the age of 14 and was selected for the Italian national team at 15. The outbreak of war brought his career to a stop but he maintained his skills as a member of an army alpine patrol in Cervinia, close to the Swiss border.

He remained in Cervinia after the war had finished and in 1947, the first year of his resumed career, on the Italian side of the nearby Klein Matterhorn (the Little Matterhorn), he set a world speed record of 158.8kph (98.7 mph), which stood for 13 years. The previous record of 136 kph (85mph), set by Leo Gasperl had stood for 16 years.

Using wooden skis,Zeno Colò won Olympic and world
titles in downhill and giant slalom competitions

Colò thus established himself as one of the first great downhill skiers. His so-called “turtle egg" position was the precursor of egg position that skiers still use today to reduce drag. His achievement in clocking such a speed was all the more remarkable, considering he used skis from wood and did not wear a helmet.

His big successes came at the World championships in 1950 in Aspen, when he won gold medals in both downhill and giant slalom, and the silver in slalom, followed two years later, at the 1952 Olympics in Oslo, with gold in the downhill.

Colò also finished fourth in the giant slalom and the slalom. Italy would wait two decades for its next Olympic gold in alpine skiing until Gustav Thöni's took giant slalom gold in 1972.

He was the first Italian to win the downhill title at the World championships and the first of any nationality to win the giant slalom, which was contested for the first time that year. Staying on in Aspen afterwards, he took in the North American championships, where he was also winner of the downhill.

Colò was Italy's torch bearer at the 1956
Olympics despite being banned

After the Oslo Games, Colò linked his name to a ski boot maker and a ski jacket. According to the regulations of the time, this breached his amateur status and in 1954 he was barred from participating in subsequent competitions.

Colò protested against the disqualification but his appeals were dismissed. Although he was allowed to compete in the national championships, it was the end of his international career. Pointedly, Italy selected him for the Olympics of Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1956 as a simple torchbearer.

He retired from competition with a record in the Italian Alpine ski championships of 29 wins in downhill, four in giant slalom, 10 in special slalom and six in combined disciplines.

Skiing remained the focus of his life, however. Leaving behind competitive skiing, he became a ski instructor at the Abetone resort, which he helped promote and develop as the ski resort of the Pistoia province. In 1973 he designed three ski slopes, which he named Zeno 1, 2 and 3.

He retained his connection with the Alps as director of the ski school in Madesimo, in the province of Sondrio in northern Lombardy.

In 1989 the Italian Winter Sports Federation finally revoked the disqualification imposed on him in 1954, although by then his days of competition were in the distant past. A lifelong smoker, his death in 1972 was the result of lung cancer.

Since Colò won his Olympic gold, Italy has won 12 more Alpine skiing gold medals, three of the them collected by the great Alberto Tomba.

The Palazzo Pretorio in Cutigliano

Travel tip:

Colò was born in Cutigliano and died in San Marcello Pistoiese, a small town less than 10km (6 miles) away. Cutigliano is an attractive medieval village, its roots possibly going back to Roman times but more likely to have origins in the eighth or ninth centuries, when it was a staging post on the mountain road linking Pistoia with Modena.  The 14^th-century Palazzo Pretorio is built in Florentine Renaissance style.

Travel tip:

San Marcello Pistoiese is a much larger place than Cutigliano, with a population of about 7,000 and again with a medieval heritage.  The churches of Santa Caterina and San Marcello are worth visiting, the latter featuring a mural by the 18^th century Florentine artist Giuseppe Gricci.  San Marcello is home to the Pistoia Mountains Astronomical Observatory.

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Ottavio Missoni - fashion designer

Former prisoner of war was also an Olympic hurdler

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni with his wife Rosita on
the lawn of their mansion in Sumirago in 1975

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni died on this day in 2013 at the age of 92 following an extraordinary life.

He passed away at his home in Sumirago, 55km (34 miles) north-west of Milan, having requested his release from hospital in order to spend his last days with his family.

Missoni was the co-founder of the Italian fashion brand Missoni, which he set up in 1953 with his wife, Rosita. The company became known around the world for its brightly coloured geometric knits and zigzag patterns and were among the pioneers of Italian ready-to-wear clothing lines.

Earlier, he had been an infantryman during the Second World War, fighting at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was captured by the 7^th Armoured Division of the British Army, popularly known as the Desert Rats, and spent the remainder of the war in an English prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt.

After the war, he pursued his passion for competitive athletics, becoming good enough to be selected in the Italian team for the 1948 Olympics in London, where he reached the final of the 400m hurdles event.

Missoni was born in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast, in 1921. His mother was a countess, his father, Vittorio, a Friulian sea captain who had moved to Dalmatia while it was under Austrian rule. He grew up in Zadar, now part of Croatia but then called Zara and part of Italian territory, before going to college in Trieste and Milan.

The Missoni logo

He had participated in athletics events before the war. A member of the Italian national team at 16, he took part in an international meeting in Milan in 1937 in which he won the 400m in a time of 48.8 second, which remains the fastest for his age in Italian track history. In 1939, over the same distance, he won a gold medal at the International University Games in Vienna.

Sport provided his entry into the fashion business. Back home after the war, Missoni and his fellow athlete Giorgio Oberweger opened a business in Trieste making wool tracksuits, which they called Venjulia suits.

The tracksuits featured zippered legs, which Missoni has been credited with inventing. The Venjulia suits recognised the need of athletes for functional, warm garments enabling freedom of movement. In fact, they were worn by the Italian Olympic team in 1948.

It was while in London that he met 16-year-old Rosita Jelmini, an English student from Golasecca, Italy, who watched him compete.  They married in 1953, and their first son, Vittorio, was born in 1954. Luca (1956) and Angela (1958) followed.

Rosita’s family had a textiles business, making shawls, and together she and Ottavio set up a machine-knitwear workshop in Gallarate, not far from Sumirago and the town in which Rosita grew up. 

Soon they were supplying designs to the Biki boutique in Milan and to La Rinascente, the department store, where the first Missoni-labelled garments, a line of colourful vertically striped shirt-dresses, were displayed in the window in 1958. 

Ottavio Missoni in 2010

They held their first catwalk show in 1966, and the following year, presented a show at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which landed them in controversy after the show’s lighting had the effect of turning the models’ clothing see-through, a misfortune made worse by the fact that most of the models went without underwear so as not to spoil the line of the clothes they were showing off. The show was likened to a bawdy cabaret and the Missonis were not invited back.

However, the publicity the scandal attracted helped the Missonis. Their next presentation, in Milan, drew much press attention and, as Milan grew as a fashion capital, the Missonis went on to feature in many leading fashion magazines. 

With a new factory in Sumirago, in a beautiful country setting in the shadow of Monte Rosa, they opened their first in-store boutique at Bloomingdale's in New York in 1970. Their first directly-owned boutique in Milan followed in 1976. 

The company enjoyed such heights of prestige that in 1983 they were invited to design the stage costumes for a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, starring Luciano Pavarotti, and in 1990 some of the costumes for the opening ceremony for the football World Cup.

In 1997, Ottavio and Rosita retired, entrusted the future of the business in their children, appointing Vittorio as marketing director and Angela as creative director, with Luca taking a technical role. The company expanded into furniture and car interiors and even set up a chain of boutique hotels.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family shortly before Ottavio died when Vittorio was killed, along with his wife, Maurizia, when a small plane in which they were travelling crashed off the coast of Venezuela.

Travel tip:

As the crow flies, the city of Zadar in Croatia is 206km (128 miles) south-east of Trieste along the Dalmatian coast. At the time of Missoni’s birth it was called Zara, and was on Italian territory as part of the settlement of the Treaty of Rapallo, which rewarded Italy’s participation on the side of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom) in defeating Germany in the First World War. With considerable Venetian influence, having for many years between the 13^th and 18^th centuries been part of the Republic of Venice, it is a city with a strong Italian flavour, retaining its beauty despite being bombed heavily during the Second World War.

Travel tip:

Sumirago, where Missoni made his home, is 15km (9 miles) south of Varese, a pleasant town a short distance from Lake Maggiore and overlooking its own picturesque lake. Well known as the location of the Sacro Monte di Varese (the Sacred Hill of Varese), which is scaled along a 2.5km path that passes 14 monuments built in the early part of the 17^th century, it is also home of the imposing Palazzo Estense and Villa Recalcati. Varese also has a cathedral, the Basilica di San Vittore, who can be found in an elegant square in the historic centre.

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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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Gelindo Bordin - marathon champion

First Italian to win Olympic gold in ultimate endurance test

Bordin on his way to victory in Seoul, pursued
by the Djibouti runner Hussain Ahmed Salah

Gelindo Bordin, the first Italian to win the gold medal in the Olympic Marathon, was born on this day in 1959 in Longare, a small town about 10km (six miles) south-east of Vicenza.

Twice European marathon champion, in 1986 and 1990, he won the Olympic competition in Seoul, South Korea in 1988.

Until Stefano Baldini matched his achievements by winning the marathon at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and claiming his second European title in Gothenburg in 2006, Bordin was Italy’s greatest long-distance runner.

He attained that status somewhat against the odds, too, having been sidelined for a year with a serious intestinal illness at the age of 20 and then being hit by a car while on a training run.

Bordin’s victory in Seoul at last made up for the disappointment the Italy team had suffered 80 years earlier when Dorando Pietri crossed the line first in the marathon at the London Olympics of 1908 only to be disqualified. In a bizarre finish to the race, Pietri took a wrong turning on entering the White City Stadium and had to be helped to his feet five times after collapsing on the track through exhaustion.

Relive Bordin's Olympic triumph

Bordin went on to win the Boston Marathon in the United States in 1990, the first reigning Olympic champion to win an event in which Olympians had seemed previously to be jinxed. His time of two hours, eight minutes and 19 seconds was the best of his career.

That year was a special one all round for Bordin. In September he successfully defended his European title in Split, Yugoslavia, becoming the first man to win the event twice, and just 35 days later he won the city marathon in Venice.

Earlier in his career he had won the city marathons of Milan, on his marathon debut in 1984, and Rome, three years later.

Bordin interviewed for a 2016 TV
documentary about his career

Venice was his last major success. In the World Championships in Tokyo in 1991, where he was hoping to improve on his bronze medal in Rome in 1987, he finished a disappointing eighth.

The following year, in Barcelona, his defence of his Olympic title ended at the halfway stage, when he strained a groin muscle jumping over a fallen runner. He was unable to finish the race and announced his retirement soon afterwards.

Like many Italian boys and girls, football was Bordin’s first sporting passion and he played as a goalkeeper for a junior team in Vicenza.

But after he was invited to take part in a cross-country race in his home village he fell in love with running and decided to give up his football ambitions.

He focussed at first on mountain cross-country running and at 17 he was one of the top Italian distance runners. Then came two major setbacks that might have finished a less determined athlete.

Bordin wins the European title
Stuttgart in 1986

The first came during a training camp in Mexico City, when he picked up a bug and developed intestinal problems that forced him out of competition for a year.

Then, shortly after making his comeback, he was hit by a car, suffering injuries that put him out of action for another year.

At 22, he made a second comeback and after winning in Milan on his marathon debut decided to become a professional runner.

At a time when doping scandals were beginning to damage the reputation of athletics – the sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold three days before the marathon in Seoul – Bordin takes pride in having never been tempted to do anything that could be seen as cheating.

Following his retirement, he did not run again for 16 years until he was persuaded to take part in the Turin marathon on its 25th anniversary in 2009.

He began working for the Italian sports apparel manufacturer Diadora immediately after his retirement and today is the sports merchandising and marketing director of the company, which is based at Caerano, 25km (15 miles) north-west of Treviso.

A church in Longare made in Costozza limestone

Travel tip:

Longare, a town of 5,700 inhabitants, is on the road between Vicenza and Este in the Veneto region, skirting an area known as the Berici Hills of which the peak is Monte Barico. The architect Andrea Palladio used the area’s characteristic Costozza limestone in the construction of many of his famous villas. The area is popular with hikers although its tourist economy suffered after the US Army’s base just outside the town was chosen as a cold war site for nuclear weapons, giving rise to fears of contamination.

Travel tip:

Caerano – or Caerano di San Marco to use its full name – is a largely modern town today but was once a signoria – a medieval city-state – that belonged first to the Ezzelini family, who were powerful in the 13th century, before passing into the hands of the Scaligeri family and eventually coming under the rule of the Republic of Venice. There are a few remnants of the ancient Venetians and some Roman artefacts, but the town’s main claim to fame today lies in being the home not only of the Diadora brand but also the Sanremo and Sanmarco labels.

More reading:

How Luigi Beccali brought home Italy's first track gold

Alberto Cova's golden hat-trick

Why the 1960 Olympics was an historic moment for black athletes

Also on this day:

1725: The birth of adventurer, author and womaniser Giacomo Casanova

(Picture credit: limestone church by Claudio Gioseffi via Wikimedia Commons)

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Pierluigi Collina - football referee

Italian arbiter seen as the best in game's history

Pierluigi Collina 

Pierluigi Collina, arguably the best and certainly the most recognisable football referee in the history of the game, was born on this day in 1960 in Bologna.

Collina, who was in charge of the 1999 Champions League final and the 2002 World Cup final, was named FIFA's referee of the year for six consecutive seasons.

He was renowned for his athleticism, his knowledge of the laws of the game and for applying them with even-handedness and respect for the players, while using his distinctive appearance to reinforce his authority on the field.

Standing 1.88m (6ft 2ins) tall and with piercing blue eyes, Collina is also completely hairless as a result of suffering a severe form of alopecia in his early 20s, giving him an intimidating presence on the field.

Growing up in Bologna, the son of a civil servant and a schoolteacher, Collina shared the dream of many Italian boys in that he wanted to become a professional footballer.  In reality, he was not quite good enough, although he was a decent central defender who played amateur football to a good standard.

Pierluigi Collina is now UEFA's
 chief  refereeing officer

When he was 17 and at college, he was persuaded to take a referee's course and displayed a natural aptitude. Soon, he was taking charge of matches in regional football and, after graduating with a degree in economics at the University of Bologna and completing his compulsory military service, began to contemplate that instead of playing he might one day referee at the highest level.

In the meantime, though, he had to work.  His first job was in the marketing department of a newspaper group based in Milan, from which he then moved to Viareggio in Tuscany to work for a bank, where he would later establish himself as a financial consultant.

He began to officiate in Serie D and Serie C matches in 1988 and within just three years had been promoted to Serie B and Serie A.

Bu 1995, with only 43 Serie A matches to his name, he was co-opted to the FIFA list for international matches, winning his first major appointment in 1996, when he was allocated five matches at the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, including the final between Argentina and Nigeria.

Named Serie A's referee of the year in 1997 and 1998 and FIFA's best in 1998, he was put in charge of the Champions League final in Barcelona in 1999, which turned out to be one of most dramatic of all finals when Manchester United scored twice during the three minutes of stoppage time added on by Collina to beat Bayern Munich 2-1.

He described the match, in which Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer scored for United to overturn Mario Basler's goal for Bayern, as the most memorable of his career, likening the noise generated by United fans at the end to the "roar of a lion."

Pierluigi Collina was never easily intimidated on the
field and earned the respect of players

The players and supporters of the German side remembered the occasion less fondly and came to regard Collina as bringing them bad luck.  He was also in charge when the German national team lost 5-1 at home to England in a World Cup qualification match in 2001 and officiated in the World Cup final in Yokohama, Japan the following summer, when Germany were beaten 2-0 by Brazil.

Collina published his autobiography, My Rules of the Game (published in English as The Rules of the Game) in 2003, and took charge of another showpiece occasion in 2004 when Valencia met Marseille in the UEFA Cup final before his career ended in regrettable circumstances the following year in a row with the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) over sponsorship.

He had agreed to a substantial contract to advertise for Opel cars (Vauxhall Motors in the United Kingdom) but as Opel were already sponsors of AC Milan the deal was seen as presenting a conflict of interest.  The FIGC felt they had no option but to bar Collina from top-level matches in Italy, to which he responded by tendering his resignation.

Despite attempts by the Italian Referees Association to find a compromise that would enable Collina to continue, he decided he would stick by his decision to resign and never officiated at a competitive professional match again, although he has refereed a number of charity matches since and serves the administration of the game as UEFA's chief refereeing officer.

Away from football, Collina has been married since 1991 to Gianna, with whom he established the coastal resort of Viareggio as his home. He has two daughters and is a lifelong supporter of Fortitudo Bologna basketball club.

Tagliatelle bolognese, one of Bologna's most famous dishes

Travel tip:

Famed for its culinary tradition, Bologna is known as La Grassa - the Fat One - and with good reason. The home of the world's most famous pasta dish - although bolognese sauce is always served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti in the city of its birth - Bologna is also famed for its mortadella sausage, which is also a key ingredient of the city's second most well-known pasta, tortellini, the little twists of pasta that are also stuffed with pork loin and proscuitto crudo (raw ham), parmesan cheese, egg and nutmeg. The best traditional food shops in Bologna can be found in the area known as the Quadrilatero, bordered by Piazza Maggiore, Via Rizzoli, Via Castiglione and Via Farini.

Choose where to stay in Bologna with Booking.com

Viareggio's seafront promenade is lined with
Art Nouveau buildings from the 1920s and 1930s

Travel tip:

Viareggio is a seaside resort in Tuscany that has an air of faded grandeur, its seafront notable for the Art Nouveau architecture that reminds visitors of the town's heyday in the 1920s and '30s. Nonetheless, with wide sandy beaches it remains hugely popular, especially with Italians, and the flamboyant Carnevale, featuring a wonderful parade of elaborate and often outrageous floats, is second only to the Venice carnival among Mardi Gras celebrations.

Find accommodation in Viareggio with Booking.com

More reading:

The record-breaking career of AC Milan's Paolo Maldini

How one goal turned Fabio Grosso into a national hero

Marcello Lippi - the coach from Viareggio who steered Italy to World Cup glory

Also on this day:

1539: The death of influential marchioness Isabella d’Este

1571: The death of Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini

1816: Fire rips through Teatro San Carlo in Naples

1912: The birth of poet Antonia Pozzi

1960: The birth of football referee Pierluigi Collina

Books:

The Rules of the Game, by Pierluigi Collina

(Picture credits: Viareggio promenade by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)

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