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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Valentino Garavani - fashion icon

Designer favoured by the world's best dressed women

Valentino Garavani became interested in fashion
while still at primary school

The fashion designer best known simply as Valentino was born in Voghera, a town about 70km (43 miles) south of Milan in the province of Pavia, on this day in 1932.

The favourite designer of the world’s best dressed women from the 1960s onwards, he built up a business that he eventually sold for $300 million.

Born Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, he became interested in fashion while still in primary school. After working initially for his aunt Rosa, with the financial support of his parents he moved to Paris to pursue his interest, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.

His first taste of working life came in the salons of Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche.  Armed with the knowledge and experience he gained at the feet of two French masters, he left Paris in 1959 to set up his first fashion house in Rome, on the fashionable Via Condotti. He quickly gained kudos for his bright red dresses, in a shade that became widely known as "Valentino red."

In July 1960, Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto in Rome. Giammetti, a little younger than Valentino and an architecture student, gave Valentino a lift home in his Fiat, starting a friendship that turned into a business partnership and a romance. The two met again on Capri 10 days later, after which Giammetti quit his studies to become Valentino's business partner. He was faced with the immediate task of saving his new friend from bankruptcy after a disastrous first year.

Giancarlo Giammetti

Together, the pair put the business on its feet, developed Valentino SpA into an international brand. Valentino made his international debut in 1962, at the Pitti Palace in Florence, which brought his designs to the attention of socialites and aristocratic women around the world.

Within a short time, Valentino's designs were considered to be at the very top of Italian couture. His client list included Queen Paola of Belgium, the movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, and the Americian First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

After the assassination of her husband, the US president John F Kennedy, it was Valentino to whom Jackie Kennedy turned to design the dresses in black and white that she wore for a year after her husband’s death.  When she remarried to Aristotle Onassis in 1968, Valentino designed her white wedding dress.

Valentino opened his first ready-to-wear shops in Milan and Rome and kept his ties with Florence but spent much of the 1970s in New York, where in addition to his friendship with Jackie Kennedy his friends included the artist Andy Warhol and Vogue’s editor-in-chief Diana Freeland.

Valentino and Giammetti in
the the 1960s

In the 1980s, he launched the first Valentino line in children’s clothes as well as a collection of clothing for young adults which he named Oliver, after one of many pet pugs.

In 1989, he opened the Accademia Valentino, designed by architect Tommaso Ziffer, near his first workshop in Rome, for the presentation of art exhibitions. The next year, encouraged by their friend Elizabeth Taylor, he and Giammetti created LIFE, an organisation to support of AIDS-related patients, in association with the Accademia.

Valentino became known in the fashion industry as The Last Emperor, and he and Giammetti have become renowned for their extravagant lifestyle. 

Although in times they ceased to be a couple in a romantic sense in the early 1970s, they have remained inseparable as friends, maintaining at least 10 homes around the world, including an historic villa on Via Appia Antica in Rome, a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, an apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, overlooking central park, a 19^th century mansion in Holland Park, London, and a Louis XIII château near Paris. They also have a 152-foot yacht. All their properties have extensive art collections.

Valentino's 152-foot yacht

Aside from fashion, Valentino has an obsession with dogs, specifically pugs. After he lost Oliver, he acquired six others, named Milton, Maggie, Maude, Monty, Margot, and Molly. When they travel with him in his 14-seat jet, each dog has their own seat. On arrival at the airport, wherever in the world it is, Valentino always arranges three cars to meet him – one for himself and Giammetti, another for their luggage and staff and and a third for the five of the six pugs. The sixth, Maude, always travels with Valentino.

In 2007, Valentino announced that he would hold his final haute couture show the following year. This show, at the Musée Rodin in Paris, featured many of Valentino’s most famous models, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzigova.

Since then, Valentino has worked only on commissions for favoured individual clients, such as actress Anne Hathaway's wedding dress in 2012 and the bridal gown worn by Princess Madeleine of Sweden the following year.

Travel tip:

Voghera is a town in Lombardy with slightly fewer than 40,000 residents. It has a 14th century castle, an 11th century Cathedral and a Museum of History that has on display a car belonging to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who was killed by the Mafia in 1982, and the weapon that allegedly killed Benito Mussolini. ‘The housewife from Voghera’ (casalinga di Voghera) is a phrase used in the media and political discourse as a reference to the average, stereotypical, somewhat lower-middle class Italian voter or consumer.

The Via dei Condotti stretches out from the foot of the
 Spanish Steps in the centre of Rome 

Travel tip:

The Via Condotti – actually Via dei Condotti – is a Rome street that takes its name from the conduits that carried water to the Roman Baths of Agrippa. Beginning at the foot of the Spanish Steps, it links the Tiber with the Pincio hill. Today, it is the street which contains the greatest number of Rome-based Italian fashion retailers, equivalent to Milan's Via Montenapoleone, Paris's Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Florence's Via de' Tornabuoni or London's Bond Street.

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Antonio Ghirelli - journalist

Neapolitan writer specialised in football and politics

Antonio Ghirelli

Antonio Ghirelli, a patriarch of Italian journalism, was born on this day in 1922 in Naples.

As passionate about football as he was about politics, Ghirelli was equally at home writing about both. At different times he edited the three principal Italian sports daily newspapers, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Tuttosport and Corriere dello Sport, but also wrote with distinction in the editorial and opinion pages of such respected titles as L'Unità, Paese Sera, Avanti!, Corriere della Sera, Il Mondo and Il Globo.

Sandro Pertini, who was President of Italy from 1978 to 1985, so respected his wisdom that he invited him to be head of the Quirinale press office. His politics were in line with those of the Socialist Pertini, as they were with Bettino Craxi, Italy’s first Socialist prime minister, for whom he was principal press officer during Craxi’s two spells in office.

Ghirelli’s first taste of politics came at university in Naples, when he wrote for a young Fascist journal.  Any sympathies he might have had with the Fascists soon disappeared, however, as Mussolini’s early socialist ideals became corrupted by his fervent nationalism and intolerance of political opponents.

Instead, Ghirelli joined the Italian Communist Party and fought against the Fascists in the Second World War as a member of the Italian Resistance. With sponsorship from the Americans, he became a voice of Radio Free Bologna.

Ghirelli worked for the president,
Sandro Pertini, at the Quirinale

In turn he was driven away from communism, mainly by the events in Hungary in 1956, when a people’s uprising against the rigidity and anti-democratic nature of Hungarian government was ruthlessly put down by Soviet troops.

He signed up instead with the Italian Socialist Party, his association with whom would later bring him into contact with Pertini.

Ghirelli cut his teeth in journalism with L'Unità, Milano Sera and Paese Sera, the afternoon edition of the left-wing Rome daily Il Paese, before his love of football and in particular his team, Napoli, drew him away from politics and into sport as the Rome editor of La Gazzetta dello Sport.

A period as editor of Tuttosport followed before Corriere dello Sport offered him the chance to apply his skills to editing the whole newspaper, which he did with success from 1965 to 1972.

In a departure from what seemed to be a secure position, he accepted the chance to work for Pertini, another left-winger in the political context who shared his enthusiasm for football. The arrangement seemed perfect for Ghirelli, only to fail after only two years over a press release concerning prime minister Francesco Cossiga, and pressure for him to resign over his supposed involvement in helping the left-wing terrorist, Marco Donat-Cattin – son of a Christian Democrat minister – to escape Italy.  Ghirelli resigned, it is said, to protect the young colleague who wrote the press release.

Ghirelli pictured during the 1980s

It was not long, however, before he returned to a position of influence in Rome’s political circles, appointed by Craxi to head the prime minister’s press office.

Once Craxi’s two periods in office were over, Ghirelli returned to mainstream journalism, first in television as the editor of TG2, the news section of Rai Due, and then as editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti!

A prolific author, Ghirelli wrote numerous books, several with a political theme but also many about the history of his beloved home city, Naples, and a number about Italian football.

He died in Rome in 2012, a month short of his 90th birthday, having remained politically active – he had joined the reconstituted Italian Socialist Party in 2008 – almost to the end.  Since his death, the Italian Football Federation has awarded an annual prize for football writing, the Premio Antonio Ghirelli.

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Quirinale (more often known simply as Il Quirinale) takes its name from its location on Quirinal Hill, the highest of the seven hills of Rome. Built originally in 1583 as a summer residence for Pope Gregory XIII, it has been the official home of the president of Italy since the republic was established in 1946. The current president, Sergio Mattarella, is the 12th in that office to occupy the living quarters. He follows 30 popes and four Kings of Italy, it having been the official royal residence from 1871. Covering an area of 110,500 square metres, it is the ninth-largest palace in the world, with 1,200 rooms. By comparison, the White House in Washington is one 20th of the size.

The Villa Rosebery overlooks the Bay of Naples

Travel tip: 

In his affection for Naples, Ghirelli would have enjoyed the times in which Sandro Pertini chose to leave Rome for the official presidential residence in Naples, the Villa Rosebery, which occupies a 6.6-hectare (16.3 acres) site in the Marechiaro district, a well-to-do area of the city overlooking the north side of the Bay of Naples, with views of Vesuvius and, from some vantage points, the island of Capri. It is so named because it was once owned by a British prime minister, The 5th Earl of Rosebery. Formerly a Bourbon residence, it fell within the territory that became part of the united Italy after the overthrow of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860. Lord Rosebery bought it from a business associate, Gustavo Delahente, in 1897.  

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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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