Valentino Rossi - motorcycle world champion

Rider from Urbino among his sport's all-time greats

Valentino Rossi is still chasing his 10th world
championship title at the age of 38

Valentino Rossi, the motorcycle racer whose seven 500cc or MotoGP world titles have established him as one of the sport's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1979 in Urbino.

Only his fellow Italian, Giacomo Agostini, the eight-times world champion, has more 500cc or MotoGP titles than Rossi, whose total of 88 race victories in the premier classification is the most by any rider.

Across all engine sizes, he has been a world champion nine times, behind only Agostini (15) and Spain's Ángel Nieto, who specialised in 50cc and 125cc classes.  Britain's Mike Hailwood and Italy's 1950s star Carlo Ubbiali also won nine world titles each.

Still competing at the highest level even at 38 years old, Rossi has not won the world title since 2009 but he has been runner-up for the last three seasons and will attempt to reclaim the crown from Spain's Marc Márquez when the 2017 season begins next month.

The two riders represent the dominant manufacturers in MotoGP, Marquez riding for Honda and Rossi, for whom this will be his 18th season in the class, for their Japanese rivals Yamaha.

Valentino Rossi in action on the Yamaha YXR-M1
on which he won the 2005 MotoGP world title

Rossi came from a motorcycling family, his father Graziano having competed on the grand prix circuit himself between 1977 and 1982. He won three races in the 250cc category in 1979, when he finished third in the overall classification.

When Valentino was still a child, the family moved to Tavullia, a small town between Urbino and Pesaro, on the Adriatic coast

Graziano's career was ended by an accident and Valentino's mother, Stefania, concerned for her son's safety, encouraged him to race on four wheels rather than two and his first love was karting.

However, after trying out in mini-motos it quickly became clear where his talent would take him after he was regional champion in 1992 at the age of 13.

The next few years saw him quickly rise through the ranks of road racing. After winning the Italian 125cc championship in 1995, when he also finished third in the 125cc European championship, he was given a ride in the world championship the following year.

Rossi (centre) in action on his way to winning
the 2009 MotoGP world title

By 1997 he was world champion, the youngest in history in the 125cc class, storming to 11 race victories for Aprilia.  Moving up to 250cc class, it took Rossi only two seasons to conquer the world at that level too, winning the title in 1999, again for Aprilia.

The pattern continued when he joined forces with Honda in the 500cc class. Runner-up in his first season, he again won the world title at just the second attempt, in 2001 becoming the final 500cc world champion before the launch of MotoGP in 2002.

By then without doubt the best rider on the planet, Rossi proceeded to win the first four MotoGP world titles, making history after his second win for Honda in 2003 by retaining the crown after his switch to Yamaha in 2004, the first rider in the history of the sport to win back-to-back premier class races for different manufacturers.

By winning nine out of 16 races, he gave Yamaha their first title for 12 years, fully justifying their decision to break the bank in order to get their man, signing him up on two-year contract reportedly worth $12 million. The money was too much for Honda and ended the romantic notion that Rossi might join the Italian team, Ducati.

Rossi dominated the 2005 season as well, this time winning 11 races and helping Yamaha celebrate their 50th anniversary by winning the manufacturers' and team titles.

Rossi signing autographs during the 2015 season

In 2011, Rossi did eventually satisfy the Italian fans by joining Ducati, by which time he had two more world titles under his belt in the 500cc/MotoGP class, bringing his total to seven. But his two seasons with the Bologna-based team were barren ones, yielding not one race victory and only three finishes on the podium.

He returned to Yamaha for the 2012 season and though he has yet to clinch the 10th world title he craves, his three runner-up positions suggest he is still very much a contender.

Rossi, who tested for the Ferrari Formula One team in 2006 before deciding he would stick with two wheels, is one of the world's highest paid sportsmen.  Fiercely protective of his private life, Rossi lived for a time in Milan before moving to London, where the high concentration of wealthy celebrities enabled him to live without quite the same level of attention as at home.

Nowadays, he is back in Italy, living in a secluded property not far from his family.  Although he has had a number of relationships, he remains single, the one constant love of his life being the Internazionale football team.

Awarded an honorary degree by the University of Urbino in 2005, he is said to enjoy his nickname on the circuit of il Dottore - the Doctor.

UPDATE: Some 28 years since his first competitive rides, Rossi finally retired from the pursuit of glory on two wheels at the end of the 2021 MotoGP season. He now races sports cars in the GT World Challenge series, in which he notched his first victory at Misano on the Adriatic coast of Italy in 2023, driving a BMW M4 GT3. In his personal life, he became a father in 2022 when his partner, Francesca Sofia Novello, gave birth to their daughter, Giulietta.

The ducal palace in Urbino

Travel tip:

Urbino, a relatively small hill town in Le Marche, is an important place in the cultural history of Italy. Enclosed within defensive walls, it has been granted UNESCO World Heritage status for representing 'a pinnacle of Renaissance art and architecture,' The principal tourist site is the palace built there by the military leader Duke Federico da Montefeltro, who maintained a court in Urbino in the 15th century. The palace houses the National Gallery of Le Marche.  From Piazza della Repubblica at the centre of Urbino, the Via Vittorio Veneto leads to the Ducal Palace, while in the opposite direction, the Via Raffaello leads past the house where the great Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born.

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The Teatro Rossini in Pesaro, the
birthplace of the opera composer

Travel tip:

Pesaro is a thriving holiday resort with many of the characteristics of seaside towns on the Adriatic coast, boasting a long, sandy beach lined with innumerable hotels. It is popular with Italian visitors in particular, with foreign tourists more likely to chose Rimini, 40km (25 miles) up the coast. Pesaro also has a significant cultural tradition, mainly due to it being the birthplace of the great opera composer, Gioachino Rossini, whose memory is honoured with an opera festival staged in August every year.

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More reading:

How Giacomo Agostini won 122 races and 15 world titles

Marco Simoncelli - a great talent snuffed out in tragic accident

How Bruno Ruffo became Italy's first world motorcycle champion

Also on this day:

1740: The birth of printer and publisher Giambattista Bodoni

1907: The death of poet Giosuè Carducci

1918: The birth of designer Achille Castiglioni

1935: The birth of Morricone's wordless vocalist Edda dell'Orso

1970: The birth of footballer Angelo Peruzzi

(Picture credits: Main Rossi picture by Hanson K Joseph; 2005 Yamaha by ozzzie; 2009 action by Robert Scoble; Rossi signing by Uppsalo; ducal palace by Il conte di Luna; Teatro Rossini by Accurimbono; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Destruction of Monte Cassino Abbey

Historic monastery flattened in Allied bombing raid

An American B17 bomber shortly after
releasing its payload over Monte Cassino

The Abbey of Monte Cassino, established in 529 and the oldest Benedictine monastery in the world, was destroyed by Allied bombers on this day in 1944 in what is now acknowledged as one of the biggest strategic errors of the Second World War on the Allied side.

The Abbey was attacked despite an agreement signed by both sides with the Vatican that the historic building would be respected as occupying neutral territory.

But Allied commanders, who had seen their infantrymen suffer heavy casualties in trying to advance along the Liri valley, the route of the main highway between Naples and Rome, were convinced that the Germans were using the Abbey, which commands sweeping views of the valley, at least as a point from which to direct operations.

This perception was reinforced by a radio intercept, subsequently alleged to have been wrongly translated, which suggested a German battalion had been stationed in the Abbey, ignoring a 300-metre area around it that was supposed to be out of bounds to soldiers on both sides.

What remained of the abbey after four hours of sustained
bombing by American planes had stopped

Knowing that attacking a historic and religiously sensitive target would divide public opinion, particularly among their Catholic populations, military sources in Britain and the United States leaked details of their suspicions to the newspapers, who obligingly printed stories that seemed to justify the plan. On Valentine's Day, 1944, leaflets were fired towards the Abbey and the nearby town of Cassino to warn residents and monks of what was coming.

The raid began at 9.24am the following day as the Abbey was bathed in wintry morning sunshine.  It continued for more than four hours in what was the biggest sustained attack on a single building of the entire war and, many have contended, the greatest aesthetic disaster of the conflict.

Fortunately, many of the art treasures contained in the Abbey had already been removed to safety in Rome by two far-sighted German officers, including paintings by Titian, El Greco and Goya, along with tens of thousands of books and manuscripts. They had been transferred to the Vatican in more than 100 truckloads the year before, although some did end up in Germany.

Parts of the abbey were almost completely destroyed,
although many art treasures had been removed

But nothing could be done to save the frescoed walls of the building itself.  In all, 229 American bombers, arriving in wave after wave, dropped 1,150 tons of high explosives and incendiaries, reducing the entire top of the 488 metre (1,600 feet) mountain to a mass of smouldering rubble.

The 79-year-old Abbot, Gregorio Diamare, escaped, along with the other monks, some of whom hid in the underground vaults. But 230 refugees given shelter inside the Abbey were killed.  There were no German casualties.  The German positions above and below the Abbey, outside the neutral zone, were seemingly untouched.  The information passed on from the radio intercept was wrong.  No German troops were inside the building, nor had been, although it was more than two decades before the mistake was fully acknowledged.

To make matters worse, the bombardment created for the Germans a superb defensive position among the ruins.

There had been a plan for Allied troops to storm the site in the aftermath of the bombing but communications between the Air Force commanders and the Army on the ground were poor and it is thought the raid was launched to take advantage of good weather with no consideration of the readiness of the follow-up plan.

As it was, essential supplies and equipment had not reached the valley and some of the soldiers who were ready to attack were forced to withdraw after stray bombs hit their positions.

As a result, the Germans were able to take control of the ruined site and create the strategic stronghold the Allies had thought they were destroying.

The Abbey of Monte Cassino after it had been rebuilt
in the 1950s following the original plans

Pope Pius XII made no public comment about the destruction of the Abbey but his Cardinal Secretary of State, Luigi Maglione, denounced it as "a colossal blunder, a piece of a gross stupidity."

The Allies did eventually capture Monte Cassino but it took them until May 18, when soldiers from the Polish II Corps planted a Polish flag among the ruins, the only remaining Germans being those who lay wounded.  However, the cost was high, Allied casualties numbering 55,000 from a total of four assaults, compared with 20,000 on the German side.

Travel tip:

After the Second World War, the Abbey of Monte Cassino was painstakingly rebuilt based on the original plans, paid for in part by the Vatican and in part by what could be raised in an international appeal.  Today, it is again a working monastery and continues to be a pilgrimage site, housing as it does the surviving relics of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. It also serves as a shrine to the 183,000 killed in the area around it.

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The Commonwealth Cemetery in Cassino with the abbey
on top of the mountain in the background

Travel tip:

There are two major war cemeteries close to Monte Cassino. At the Cassino War Cemetery, some 4,271 Common- wealth servicemen killed are buried or commem- orated.  The graves of more than 1,000 Poles and 200 Belarusians can be found within a separate Polish Cemetery, including that of General Wladyslaw Anders, who commanded the Polish force that finally captured Monte Cassino.

More reading:

How Italy entered the Second World War

Mussolini's last stand

Alcide de Gasperi begins to rebuild Italy

Also on this day:

1564: The birth of Galileo Galilei

1898: The birth of comic actor Totò

1910: The birth of circus clown Charlie Cairoli

1927: The birth of papal candidate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini

Books:

Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell, by Peter Caddick-Adams

(Picture credits: rebuilt Abbey by Radomil; Cassino Cemetery by Amiens984; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Otto e mezzo - Fellini's masterpiece

Creative crisis spawned director's tour de force

The original publicity poster for the
Fellini movie 8½

The film Otto e mezzo (8½), regarded by some critics as the director Federico Fellini's greatest work, was released in Italy on this day in 1963.

It was categorised as an avant-garde comedy drama but the description hardly does it justice given its extraordinary individuality, evolving from conception to completion as an interweaving of fantasy and reality in which life not so much imitates art as becomes one and the same thing.

By the early 60s, Fellini was already a three-times Oscar winner following the success of La strada, Nights of Cabiria and La dolce vita, the last-named having also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

La dolce vita had signalled Fellini's move away from the neo-realism that characterised cinema in Italy in the immediate post-war years towards the surreal interpretations of life and human nature that became popular with later directors and came to define Fellini's art.

While that movie was generating millions of dollars at the box office and turning Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg into international stars, Fellini was under pressure from his producers to come up with a sequel.

Fellini was under pressure to deliver
a sequel to La dolce vita

He had an idea but it was little more than a vague outline, a story about a man suffering from creative block.  He knew it would be about the internal conflicts thrown up by artistic and marital difficulties and the opportunity to reflect brought about by a period at a health spa recovering from what might today be interpreted as nervous exhaustion, but he had no clear vision of the script, could not decide the profession of his main character and did not even have a working title.

Pressed by the producers to sign off on a deal, it is said that he chose Otto e mezzo on the basis that he had directed six feature films, worked jointly on another and made two shorts, each of which he considered to be worth 'half a feature' and that therefore his latest would be film number eight and a half in his directing career.

He had still not developed a coherent idea when he was ordered to start production in the spring of 1962 yet the wheels were in motion.  Filming dates were agreed, sets were constructed and actors were hired, including Mastroianni for the male lead, yet other than coming up with a name, Guido Anselmi, for his main character, Fellini was scarcely closer to any clarity of thought.

Claudia Cardinale played lead character Guido Anselmi's
 'Ideal Woman' in Fellini's Otto e mezzo

In fact, he would have told Angelo Rizzoli, his producer, that he was abandoning the project had he not been summoned to join the crew in celebrating its launch just as he was drafting a letter to that effect.

Fellini later admitted that as he raised his glass to toast the film he "felt overwhelmed by shame" but that the moment of despair then became one of inspiration.

"I was in a no-exit situation," he said. "I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place.

"I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make".

The result was a film that blended the storyline such as it was with fantastic dream sequences as the characters moved between reality and Guido's imagination, Fellini so often indulging in impulsive improvisations that essentially he was making up the movie as he went along.  As was the way with Italian films at the time, the dialogue was overdubbed afterwards, which from the point of view of the actors trying to keep up was probably just as well.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anouk Aimée
also starred in Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Yet the end result, starring Mastroianni as Guido, the French actress Anouk Aimée as his wife, and two Tunisian-Italians, Sandra Milo and Claudia Cardinale, respectively as his mistress and the Ideal Woman of his fantasies, was received with almost universal acclaim.

Critics conceded that audiences might find it challenging in its complexity but generally hailed it as a triumph.  One wrote that it had advanced avant-garde cinema "by 20 years in one fell swoop because it both integrates and surpasses all the discoveries of experimental cinema".

Another praised its "fantastic liberality, total absence of precaution and hypocrisy, absolute dispassionate sincerity, artistic and financial courage".

8½ won two Academy Awards, for best foreign language film and best costume design (black-and-white) as well as nominations for best director, best original screenplay and best art direction (black-and-white).

The New York Film Critics Circle also named 8½ best foreign language film while the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded the movie seven prizes for director, producer, original story, screenplay, music - by Nino Rota - cinematography (Gianni di Vananzo) and best supporting actress (Sandra Milo).

At the Saint Vincent Film Festival, it was awarded the Grand Prize over Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo (The Leopard) but had to be passed over for an award after its screening at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival because it had been shown outside the competition.

It also won the Grand Prize at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.

Travel tip:

Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, which with 15km (nine miles) of sandy beaches is the largest resort in Italy and famous across Europe as a holiday destination.  It is said to have more than 1,000 hotels.  Away from the sea front there is an older part of the town with relics that reflect its Roman origins.  Rimini is proud of its heritage and a Federico Fellini Museum can be found in Via Clementini in the historic centre, covering everything related to his life and career.

A commemorative plaque celebrating Fellini's career can be
found in the Via Veneto in Rome, backcloth to La dolce vita

Travel tip:

Although Fellini's body was returned to Rimini after his death in Rome at the age of 73, and is buried near the main entrance to the Cemetery of Rimini in a tomb designed by Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fellini is also commemorated in Rome, including a plaque on the Via Veneto celebrating the street's central role in La dolce vita.

More reading:

The cinematic legacy of Rimini's most famous son

How Dino de Laurentiis put Italian cinema on the map

Roberto Rossellini - pioneer of Italian neo-realism
 

Also on this day:

How mating birds made San Valentino a symbol of romance

Books:

Federico Fellini: The Complete Films

(Picture credits: Fellini plaque by Peter Clarke via Wikmedia 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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