Gastone Nencini – cycling champion

Lion of Mugello won both Tour de France and Giro d’Italia

Gastone Nencini in buoyant mood after
winning the Tour de France in 1960

Gastone Nencini, sometimes described as Italy’s forgotten cycling champion, and certainly one of its least heralded, was born on this day in 1930 in Barberino di Mugello, a town in the Tuscan Apennines, about 38km (24 miles) north of Florence.

Nencini won the 1957 Giro d’Italia and the 1960 Tour de France, putting him in the company of only seven Italians to have won the greatest of cycling’s endurance tests.

He followed Ottavio Bottecchia, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi and preceded Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani and the most recent winner, 2014 champion Vincenzo Nibali.

Yet often even cycling fans asked to name the seven Italian champions sometimes forget Nencini, despite his courage and resilience earning him the nickname The Lion of Mugello.

This may be in part because he died very young, a month short of his 50^th birthday, after developing a rare disease of the lymphatic system.  Others, in particular members of his family, believe it was his maverick nature, his refusal to comply with the sport’s etiquette, that damaged his reputation.

In his era, some claim, there were unwritten rules in cycling by which the so-called domestiques – i.e. those not expected to be in contention for honours – would ride purely for the benefit of their team, giving the best riders maximum chance of success.

Rival rider Fausto Coppi was accused
of plotting against Nencini

Nencini, a powerful all-rounder who was strong in the mountain sections and was a particularly fearless descender, was not willing to be told what to do for the benefit of someone else’s race and became known for ignoring team orders.

This was evident in 1955, in only his second year as a professional, when he put himself in a position to win the Giro d’Italia against the odds, in a field that included three previous champions in Hugo Koblet, Fiorenzo Magni and the five-times winner Coppi.

His family believed that Magni and Coppi were part of a conspiracy on the penultimate stage, the 216km (134 miles) leg from Trento to San Pellegrino Terme, when Nencini suffered multiple punctures but often found the support vehicles were slow to be on hand, meaning that wheel changes, often completed in as little as 15 seconds, sometimes cost him more than a minute.

The two champions drove on hard whenever Nencini had to stop, with the result that Coppi won the stage and Magni regained his place as race leader, which he kept over the final stage into Milan.

Two years later, with both Coppi and Magni absent, Nencini took the title, this time benefitting from a feud between the defending champion, Luxemburg’s Charly Gaul, and the Frenchman Louison Bobet, which saw Gaul determined to wear down Bobet in the closing stages, enabling Nencini to claim the title.

Nencini leads the field in the 1960 Giro d'Italia

His 1960 victory in the Tour de France was achieved without winning a single stage, one of only seven winners of the race with that distinction.  This time, he took advantage of the misfortune of the French rider Roger Rivière, who was in a position to win the race when he crashed over a wall trying to keep up with Nencini on a descent, suffering damage to his spine that left him permanently disabled.

Only the Frenchman Henry Anglade was a match for Nencini in a descent. He had come out on top in a one-to-one challenge down an Italian mountain in 1959 but had warned Rivière not to attempt to emulate him. 

After quitting competitive racing, Nencini, whose free-spirited, anti-authority nature also extended to smoking cigarettes and drinking wine with dinner even during races, owned a bike shop and indulged his talent for painting, taking lessons from Pietro Annigoni, who had painted portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John XXIII and President John F Kennedy among others.

He died in hospital in Florence in February, 1980. His memory has been honoured with a plaque mounted on a wall by the roadside at the Futa Pass, which has been part of a Giro d’Italia stage that passes close by Barberino.

Travel tip:

The Castle of Cafaggiolo was a Medici
summer residence 

Barberino di Mugello is one of nine municipalities in a pretty area of the Tuscan Apennines close to Lago di Bilancino on the road between Florence and Bologna. The locality was popular in the Renaissance years with the powerful Medici family, the rulers of Florence, who had several residences there including the Castle of Cafaggiolo, a former fortress that was converted into a summer residence by Michelozzo, best known for designing the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.

The Giro d'Italia traditionally finished with the riders
entering the Arena Civica, the neoclassical amphitheatre

Travel tip:

The Giro d’Italia of today has stages outside Italy – this year, for example, it will start in Jerusalem, in Israel – but traditionally it began and finished in Milan, the riders setting off from Piazzale Loreto and finishing at the Arena Civica, the neoclassical amphitheatre inside the Parco Sempione, behind the Castello Sforzesco. The stadium, commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805, was at one time the home of the Milan football club Internazionale. Known nowadays as the Arena Gianni Brera, named after Italy’s most famous football journalist, it is a venue for international athletics, also hosting rugby union as well as Milan's third football team, Brera Calcio FC.

More reading:

The tragedy of Marco Pantani

Alfredo Binda - the champion so good he was paid not to race

Gino Bartali - cycling's secret war hero

Also on this day:

1773: The death of Luigi Vanvitelli, designer of the Royal Palace in Caserta and the backdrop to the Trevi Fountain in Rome

1869: The birth of sculptor Pietro Canonica

1926: The birth of movie star Cesare Danova

Selected reading:

Giro d'Italia: The Story of the World's Most Beautiful Bike Race, by Colin O'Brien

Pedalare! Pedalare! A History of Italian Cycling, by John Foot

(Nencini by Harry Pot; 1960 Giro from Dutch National Archives; Coppi by J.D.Noske; Castle by Massimilianogalardi; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Mario Andretti – racing driver

American champion was born and grew up in Italy

Mario Andretti raced as an American but
was born in Montona, then part of Italy

Mario Andretti, who won the 1978 Formula One World Championship driving as an American, was born on this day in 1940 in Montona, about 35km (22 miles) south of Trieste in what was then Istria in the Kingdom of Italy.

Andretti’s career was notable for his versatility. He is the only driver in motor racing history to have won an Indianapolis 500, a Daytona 500 and an F1 world title, and one of only two to have won races in F1, Indy Car, NASCAR and the World Sportscar Championship. He is the last American to have won an F1 Grand Prix.

He clinched the 1978 F1 title at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September, the 14^th of the 16 rounds, having led the standings by 12 points going into the race.  He crossed the line first and even though he was demoted to sixth place – the result of a one-minute penalty for going too soon at a restart – it was enough to mean he could not be caught.

His celebrations were muted, however, after his close friend, the Swedish driver Ronnie Petersen, died from complications to injuries he suffered in a crash on the first lap.

Andretti’s early years in Italy were fraught with difficulties. He and his twin brother, Aldo, were brought up by their father Gigi,  a farm manager, and their mother Rina in a loving family but at the end of the Second World War their lives were turned upside down when the allies ceded Istria to Yugoslavia and they found themselves living in a Communist country.

Mario Andretti with Lotus boss Colin Chapman (left) during
the 1978 Formula One championship-winning season

They stayed there until 1948, hoping somehow the old order would be restored, but eventually joined the Italian exodus from the region, moving first to a dispersement camp in Udine, and then to Lucca in Tuscany, where they would live in a crowded refugee camp, sharing a single room with several other families, for the next seven years.

In 1955, the family decided to emigrate to the United States, leaving all of their possessions behind and settling in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

The twins were already enthusiastic about cars.  As five-year-olds in their home village, they had raced each other down the steep streets in hand-made wooden cars.  Later, while they were living in Lucca, they watched a section of the Mille Miglia endurance race and Mario became captivated by Alberto Ascari, the two-times F1 World Champion, who won the race.

In Nazareth they went to work in an uncle’s garage and quickly learned about cars.  Their first experience of competition in America was on a dirt track near their home, where they took part in stockcar races unbeknown to their parents, in a car they had borrowed from their uncle’s workshop.

Although Aldo was unlucky that an injury hampered his progress, Mario quickly showed his talent, winning 20 races in his first two seasons.

The Lotus 79 car in which Andretti won the 1978 title

He knew racing was the career he wanted to follow and quickly worked his way through the ranks before making his Indy Car debut in 1964, the year he became an American citizen.  He won his first Indy Car race in 1965 and, amazingly, became United States Auto Club champion at the first attempt, finishing in the top four in 12 races. At 25, he was the youngest champion in the history of the event.

He defended the title successfully in 1966, winning eight races, and claimed further Indy Car championships in 1969 and 1984.

Andretti’s Formula One debut came in 1968, three years after he had met Colin Chapman, the British owner of the Lotus team, and outlined his ambitions.  Chapman had told him to get in touch once he thought he was ready and, true to his word, gave the Italian-American an opportunity.

It took him three years to achieve a first F1 win, in the South African GP in 1971, driving for Ferrari, and another five years to clinch his second, in the Japanese GP in 1976, having returned to Chapman’s garage for John Player Team Lotus.

Mario Andretti today

Everything clicked in 1977, when he was third in the standings after four race wins, and in 1978, driving the so-called “ground effects” Lotus he had helped develop, when he took the drivers’ title.

Andretti continued to race competitively until he was 54.  By the time he decided enough was enough, his list of honours, in addition to his four Indy Car titles, his wins at the 1969 Indianapolis 500 and 1967 Daytona 500 events and his F1 title, included three 12 Hours of Sebring victories, a USAC dirt track title and an International Race of Champions victory.

In all, he competed in 879 races, of which he won 111. He is the only driver to have won Indy Car races in four decades.

In retirement, Andretti has pursued a number of business interests, including a winery, worked as an ambassador for a number of companies and made frequent television appearances.  Both his sons, Michael and Jeff, became drivers, Michael repeating his father’s success by becoming Indy Car champion in 1991. His grandson, Marco – Michael’s son – is also a racing driver.

Motovun, formerly Montona, sits on top of a hill in Istria,
the area of Croatia that was in Italy when Andretti was born

Travel tip:

Montona – now known as Motovun and part of Croatia – was an idyllic hilltop village as Mario and his brother, Aldo, were growing up, surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside.  The summit could be reached by climbing a 1,052-step staircase, said to be the longest staircase in the world, and anyone with the stamina to complete the climb would be rewarded with stunning views over the vineyards of the Quieto river valley. The main square is named after Andrea Antico, a Renaissance music printer who invented the first wooden types for printing music scores.

Piazza dell'Anfiteatro in Lucca

Travel tip:

Lucca, where the Andrettis lived until they were granted visas to emigrate to the United States, is situated in western Tuscany, just 20km (12 miles) from Pisa, and 80km (50 miles) from Florence. Its majestic Renaissance walls are still intact, providing a complete 4.2km (2.6 miles) circuit of the city popular with walkers and cyclists.  The city has many charming cobbled streets and a number of beautiful squares, plus a wealth of churches, museums and galleries and a notable musical tradition, being the home of composers Alfredo Catalani, Luigi Boccherini and the opera giant, Giacomo Puccini.


More reading: 

Riccardo Patrese, the first F1 driver to compete in 250 Grands Prix

Michele Alboreto, the last Italian to challenge for the F1 drivers' title

A crash kills Alberto Ascari, twice F1 world champion

Also on this day:

1915: The birth of jam and juice maker Karl Zuegg

1942: The birth of goalkeeper Dino Zoff, the oldest player to win a World Cup

Selected reading:

The Golden Age of Formula One, by Rainer W Schlegelmilch

Driven: The Men Who Made Formula One, by Kevin Eason

(Picture credits: Top picture of Andreotti by Gillfoto; Andretti with Chapman by Suyk, Koen; Andretti today by Jonathan Mauer; Piazza in Lucca by Robespierre; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Simone Di Pasquale – dancer

Ballroom talent has been springboard for business success

Simone Di Pasquale is a regular on the
Italian TV show Ballando con le Stelle

Ballroom dancer and television celebrity Simone Di Pasquale was born on this day in 1978.

In 2005, he became a household name after he started to appear regularly on Italian television in Ballando con le Stelle - the equivalent of the US show Dancing with the Stars and Britain’s Strictly Come Dancing. The annual show, presented by Milly Carlucci, is broadcast every Saturday evening on the tv channel Rai Uno during the season.

Pasquale has also appeared in numerous other television programmes, on stage in musical theatre and as an actor in a television drama.

Born in Rome, Di Pasquale learnt ballroom dancing at a young age and took part in competitions.

In 2000 he paired up with the dancer Natalia Titova, who also later became a celebrity because of Ballando con le Stelle. The couple were engaged from 1998 to 2005.

They took first place in the competition Rising Stars UK in 2004.

In the first season of Ballando con le Stelle, Di Pasquale partnered the Italian actress Hoara Borselli and the couple won the competition. He has taken part in each successive series since. The 2018 season of the show is due to begin on March 10 and will be broadcast live on Rai Uno every Saturday night.

Di Pasquale has appeared as a guest on numerous programmes on Italian television and had a role in an episode of the long running crime series, Don Matteo.

Di Pasquale and actress Hoara Borselli won the first
series of the Ballando con le stelle competition

He has also appeared on many famous stages in the musicals, Saturday Night Fever and Hairspray: Fat is beautiful!

Di Pasquale has dance schools in Rome, Florence, Milan, and Bologna and runs the company, Twister Entertainment, which organises events and dance and entertainment initiatives.

He presented the final of the European Championship of Tango in 2013, which was broadcast from Rome on Rai Uno and he also was part of the Canadian tour of Ballando con le Stelle in 2014, which was renamed Dances with Milly.

In January 2018, he was production director for the prestigious La Notte delle Stelle, a pro-am dance competition held at the Parco dei Principi in Rome.

Mussolini had hoped his new stadium in Rome would
host the Olympic Games in 1944

Travel tip:

Ballando con le Stelle is broadcast from Rai's studio in Piazza Lauro de Bosis close to Foro Italico in Rome. Formerly named Foro Mussolini, the Olympic Stadium was built between 1928 and 1938 to a design by Enrico del Debbio and Luigi Moretti inspired by the Roman forums of the Imperial age. The purpose of the prestigious project was to secure the Olympic Games of 1944 for Fascist-run Italy, although in the event there were no Games that year because of the Second World War.

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The Villa Borghese gardens date back to 1605

Travel tip:

The pro-am dance competition produced and directed by Di Pasquale in January was held at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi, which is in one of the most prestigious locations in Rome, on the edge of the Villa Borghese gardens and close to the Via Veneto. The beautiful Villa Borghese gardens date back to 1605 when Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, commissioned the work to turn a former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in Rome since the days of the republic.

More reading:

Marco Delvecchio - the footballer who became a dance show star

Italy's Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli

Flavia Cacace - the Strictly star famous for Argentine tango

Also on 27 February:

1935: The birth of opera star Mirella Freni

1950: The birth of fashion designer Franco Moschino

1964: Italy appeals for help in Leaning Tower scare

1973: The birth of singer and actress Chiara Iezzi

Books:

Bruno Tonioli: My Story

(Picture credits: Stadio dei Marmi by Blackcat; Borghese Gardens by Jean-Christophe Benoist; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Dante Ferretti – set designer

Three-times Oscar winner worked with Fellini and Scorsese

Dante Ferretti has worked in the film
industry for more than 50 years

Dante Ferretti, who in more than half a century in movie production design has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won three, was born on this day in 1943 in the city of Macerata, in the Marche region of central Italy.

Ferretti, who works in partnership with his wife, the set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, won two of his Oscars for films directed by Martin Scorsese, with whom he has enjoyed a collaboration that began 25 years ago this year.

Nominated for his first film with Scorsese, The Age of Innocence (1993) and subsequently for Kundun (1998) and Gangs of New York (2003), he was successful with The Aviator (2005) and Hugo Cabret (2012).

Both Oscars, for Best Scenography, were shared with Lo Schiavo, with whom he also shared an Oscar for Tim Burton’s 2008 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Ferretti also enjoyed long collaborations with Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and worked with a string of other major directors, including Elio Petri, Ettore Scola, Franco Zeffirelli, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Terry Gilliam, Anthony Minghella, Brian de Palma, Julie Taymor and Kenneth Branagh.

Born a few months before Macerata would become something of a battleground in the Second World War, occupied by Nazi troops in the wake of Mussolini’s downfall and then subjected to allied bombing, Ferretti had design in his blood, coming from a family of furniture makers.

Gangs of New York was shot almost entirely on sets built
by Dante Ferretti at Cinecittà

After completing school, he went to Rome, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and, fascinated with the film industry, began working at the Cinecittà studios, where he would eventually have his own permanent office.

After cutting his teeth as an assistant on a number of Pasolini titles, he landed his first appointment as set director for Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea. 

His work on that movie caught with attention of Fellini, his partnership with whom he described as a “dream come true”.  Notable successes over the next two decades included The City of Women and Ginger and Fred.

In the mid-1980s, he worked outside Italy for the first time, on such titles as The Name of the Rose (1986), French director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film version of the novel by Umberto Eco, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), directed by the former Monty Python star Terry Gilliam, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.

Martin Scorsese worked with Ferretti on
nine movies, two of which won him Oscars

His association with Scorsese did not begin until 1993, although they had met some years earlier at Cinecittà. To date, they have made nine films together, the most ambitious and challenging of which, he said in a recent interview, was Gangs of New York, the epic period drama set in the notorious Five Points district of New York, for which Ferretti constructed full-scale models of New York street scenes within Cinecittà. There was even a set designed to represent the Hudson River, complete with a full-size ship.

More recently, he and Lo Schiavo worked on Scorsese’s Silence, his film about Jesuits in Japan persecuted for their Christian faith in the 17^th century, which involved reconstructions of the Japanese city of Nagasaki and the Chinese port of Macau.

A passionate fan of opera, Ferretti has also designed sets for some of the world’s most famous opera houses, including Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opéra in Paris, the Royal Opera House in London and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

The Ben Hur set at Cinecittà World, outside Rome

Travel tip:

As well as admiring his work on the screen, fans of Ferretti’s sets can see examples of his creativity at first hand at the Rome theme park, Cinecittà World, which was opened in 2014 in the grounds of the former studio complex Dinocittà, which was set up in the 1960s by the producer Dino De Laurentiis. Containing 26 sets to represent different themes and genres in cinema history, all of which were designed by Ferretti, the park is at Castel Romano, about 25km (16 miles) south of Rome in the Decima Malafede nature reserve.

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The open-air Arena Sferisterio at Macerata

Travel tip:

The city of Macerata, home to about 43,000 people, is situated in an inland area of Marche, about 48km (30 miles) south of Ancona and 30km (19 miles) from the coastal town of Civitanova Marche. Not a well-known tourist destination, it nonetheless has a charming hilltown feel, with a maze of narrow cobblestone streets and one of Italy’s oldest universities, dating back to 1290. It is the setting each summer for a month-long opera festival at the atmospheric Arena Sferisterio, which has attracted some of the world’s biggest stars.

Macerata hotels from Hotels.com


More reading:

Otto e mezzo - Fellini's masterpiece

Tonino Delli Colli - the cinematographer who shot Life is Beautiful

Renzo Mongiardino - set designer known as the 'architect of illusion'

Also on this day:

1815: Napoleon escapes from Elba

1921: The birth of Milan architect Angelo Mangiarotti

Selected books:

A History of Italian Cinema, by Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni

(Picture credits: Dante Ferretti by Edoferretti; Arena Sferisterio by Florian Priscl; via Wikimedia Commons)

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