}}

Cesare Rubini (November 2, 1923 February 8, 2011) was an Italian basketball player and coach, and water polo player. One of the greatest European coaches of all time, Rubini was inducted intto the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994, the first and to this day one of the few Italian basketball figures to receive such an honour, together with Dino Meneghin and Sandro Gamba. He has also been inducted in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Career

Rubini started to play basketball for his high school team in his native Trieste, where he graduated in 1941. The same year he began to play for Olimpia Milano, the most prestigious Italian basketball club at that time. He however had a long-lived passion for water polo: this led him later to become one of the rare world sportsmen to play at the highest level in two different team sports.

In 1946 he won a silver medal with the Italian basketball national team in the European Championships held in Geneva. The following year, he also won a silver medal at the European Championships, but this time with the water polo national team. In the meantime he had assumed the role of player-coach of Olimpia Milano: in 1948, however, he was called by the national teams of both sports. Rubini chose water polo, and won a gold medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, beating the Netherlands in the final. With Rubini as a full-time player, Italy could boast what was to be called the "Golden Settebello", one of the most valuable water polo teams ever, which also won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics and at the Turin European Championships of 1954. In both the events, Italy was behind traditional rivals of Yugoslavia and Hungary.

Rubini, also as player-coach, won 6 national titles in water polo with Canottieri Olona of Milan, Rari Nantes of Naples and Camogli teams. He totalled 84 caps for the Italian national team, 42 of which as captain.

As a basketball player, Rubini won 5 national titles in a row, from 1950 to 1954. After 1956 he devoted only to the coach role, winning 10 national titles with Olimpia. In these years he set an unparalleled record of a 322 victories and 28 defeats. As coach of the Milan team, Rubini totalled 488 victories, including the European Winner's Cup of 1966 and two European Cup Winner's Cups in 1971 and 1972: these were the first international victories of Italian basketball clubs.

As the manager of the national basketball team, Rubini took also part in the first international victories of Italy: these include the silver medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics. At the European Championships, Italy was first in 1983 at Nantes, second in 1991 at Rome and third in 1985 at Stuttgart.

Rubini was involved into his beloved sports until his death: he promoted water polo formation for young athletes, and was Honorary President of Olimpia Milano.

External links

Profile Basketball Hall of Fame

Category:1923 births Category:2011 deaths Category:People from Trieste Category:Italian basketball players Category:Italian basketball coaches Category:Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees Category:Italian water polo players Category:Water polo players at the 1948 Summer Olympics Category:Water polo players at the 1952 Summer Olympics Category:Olympic water polo players of Italy Category:Olympic gold medalists for Italy Category:Olympic bronze medalists for Italy Category:Sportspeople of multiple sports Category:Euroleague-winning coaches Category:Olympic medalists in water polo

da:Cesare Rubini de:Cesare Rubini es:Cesare Rubini fr:Cesare Rubini hr:Cesare Rubini it:Cesare Rubini lt:Cesare Rubini no:Cesare Rubini pl:Cesare Rubini pt:Cesare Rubini fi:Cesare Rubini

Dan Peterson (born January 9, 1936) is a former American professional basketball head coach. He resigned his most recent position as the head coach of Olimpia Milano in the Italian Serie A1 after the team was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 2011 Italian league playoffs. The team has announced that he will assume another role (not yet announced) with the club. He is nicknamed "The Coach" for his legacy in Italian basketball.

Education

Peterson went to Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill. He received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Evanston and a masters degree from the University of Michigan.

Early career

He served as assistant coach for NAIA school McKendree College from 1962 to 1963. From 1963 to 1964 he served as freshmen coach at Michigan State. After MSU, for one season, he was plebe coach at the United States Naval Academy. The next year, at the age of 30, he became head coach at the University of Delaware. In five years there, he assembled a record of 69 wins and 49 losses.

Abroad

In 1971, he went abroad, acting as head coach of the Chilean national team until 1973. From 1973–1978, he coached Virtus Bologna in the Italian Serie A1, winning the 1974 "Coppa Italia" and, in 1976, the Italian league title. In 1978 he was hired as head coach of Olimpia Milano where he won four Italian titles (1982, 1985, 1986, 1987), two more "Coppa Italia" awards (1986, 1987), a Korać Cup (1985) and one Champions Cup, the highest title in Europe for basketball.

Retirement

In 1987 he retired after coaching in Italy for 14 years, but he resumed coaching on January 3, 2011, with Olimpia Milano. He still holds records for a coach in Italian playoffs with 11 Final Four appearances in 11 years (after which a playoff format was introduced), 9 finals, 4 titles, 74 games coached, and 51 games won.

Commentator

After his retirement he became a popular sports commentator for many Italian television channels. He's currently doing color commentary on the Italian channel Sportitalia.

Awards

He received the Coach of the Year award for Europe from the WABC and the Coach of the Year for Italy twice. Following his retirement from coaching, he was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995.

In 2007, Peterson was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Evanston Township High School.

In 2008, he was named one of the 50 most influential European club basketball personalities over the last half-century.

A poll says that he is the foreigner with the most sexy voice in Italy.

Comeback

On January 3, 2011 he became the new head coach of Olimpia Milano after the dismissal of Piero Bucchi.

References

External links

Career basketpedya.com

Feature story on Dan Peterson in Northwestern University magazine

Category:McKendree University faculty Category:1936 births Category:Living people Category:People from Evanston, Illinois Category:American basketball coaches Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:Euroleague-winning coaches Category:University of Michigan alumni

es:Dan Peterson fr:Dan Peterson it:Dan Peterson

name	Fausto Coppi
fullname	Angelo Fausto Coppi
nickname	'Il Campionissimo''Champion of Champions'
birth date	September 15, 1919
death place	Tortona, Italy
death date	January 02, 1960
birth place	Castellania, Italy
uciregistration	Italy
discipline	Race
role	Rider
ridertype	All-rounder
proyears	1939–1942 1945 1946–1955 1956–1957 1958 1959
proteams	Legnano S.S. Lazio Ciclismo/Bianchi Bianchi Carpano Bianchi Tricofilina
majorwins	Grand Tours :Tour de France ::Overall Classification (1949, 1952) ::Mountain Classification (1949, 1952) :: 9 Stages (1949-1952) :Giro d'Italia ::Overall Classification (1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953) ::Mountain Classification (1948, 1949, 1954) ::22 Stages (1940–1955) Single-Day Races and Classics :Road Race World Championship (1953) :Milan – San Remo (1946, 1948, 1949) :Paris–Roubaix (1950) :Giro di Lombardia (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1954) :La Flèche Wallonne (1950) :Grand Prix des Nations (1946, 1947) :Italian Road Race Championship (1942, 1945, 1949, 1955) :Giro dell'Emilia (1941, 1947, 1948) :Giro di Romagna (1946, 1947, 1949) :Giro del Veneto (1941, 1947, 1949) :Tre Valli Varesine (1941, 1948, 1955) Hour record
medaltemplates	}}

}}

Angelo Fausto Coppi, (15 September 1919, Castellania, Province of Alessandria – 2 January 1960, Tortona, Province of Alessandria), was the dominant international cyclist of the years each side of the Second World War. His successes earned him the title ''Il Campionissimo'', or ''champion of champions''. He was an all-round racing cyclist: he excelled in both climbing and time trialing, and was also a great sprinter. He won the Giro d'Italia five times (1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953), the Tour de France twice (1949 and 1952), and the World Championship in 1953. Other notable results include winning the Giro di Lombardia five times, the Milan – San Remo three times, as well as wins at Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne and setting the hour record (45.798 km) in 1942.

Background

Coppi was one of five children born to Domenico Coppi and his wife, Angiolina Boveri, who married on 29 July 1914. Fausto was the fourth child, born at 5pm on 15 September 1919. His mother wanted to call him Angelo, but his father preferred Fausto. He was named Angelo Fausto but was known most of his life as Fausto.

Coppi had poor health as a child and showed little interest in school. In 1927 he was condemned to write "I ought to be at school, not riding my bicycle" after skipping lessons to spend the day riding a family bike he had found in a cellar, rusty and without brake blocks. He left school at 13 to work for Domenico Merlani, a butcher in Novi Ligure more widely known as Signor Ettore.

Cycling to and from the shop and meeting cyclists who came there interested him in racing. The money to buy a bike came from his uncle, also called Fausto Coppi, and his father. Coppi said:

He rode his first race at 15, among other boys not attached to cycling clubs, and won 20 lire and a salami sandwich for first prize. Coppi took a racing licence at the start of 1938 and won his first race, at Castelleto d'Orba, near the butcher's shop. He won alone, winning an alarm clock.

Biagio Cavanna

A regular caller at the butcher's shop in Novi Ligure was a former boxer who had become a masseur, a job he could do after losing his sight, in 1938. Giuseppe Cavanna was known to friends as Biagio. Coppi met him that year, recommended by another of Cavanna's riders. Cavanna suggested in 1939 that Coppi should become an independent, a class of semi-professionals who could ride against both amateurs and professionals. He sent him to the Tour of Tuscany that April with the advice: "Follow Gino Bartali!" He was forced to stop with a broken wheel. But at Varzi on 7 May 1939 he won one of the races counting to the season-long national independent championship. He finished seven minutes clear of the field and won his next race by six minutes.

Career

Raphaël Géminiani said of Coppi's domination:

When Fausto won and you wanted to check the time gap to the man in second place, you didn't need a Swiss stopwatch. The bell of the church clock tower would do the job just as well. Paris–Roubaix? Milan – San Remo? Lombardy? We're talking 10 minutes to a quarter of an hour. That's how Fausto Coppi was.

His first large success was in 1940, winning the Giro d'Italia at the age of 20. In 1942 he set a world hour record (45.798 km at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan) which stood for 14 years until it was broken by Jacques Anquetil in 1956. His career was then interrupted by the Second World War. In 1946 he resumed racing and achieved remarkable successes which would be exceeded only by Eddy Merckx. The veteran writer Pierre Chany said that from 1946 to 1954 Coppi was never once recaught once he had broken away from the rest.

Twice, 1949 and 1952, Coppi won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year, the first to do so. He won the Giro five times, a record shared with Alfredo Binda and Eddy Merckx. During 1949's Giro he left Gino Bartali by 11 minutes between Cuneo and Pinerolo. Coppi won the 1949 Tour de France by almost half an hour over everyone except Bartali. From the start of the mountains in the Pyrenees to their end in the Alps, Coppi took back the 55 minutes by which Jacques Marinelli led him.

He won the Giro di Lombardia a record five times (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1954). He won Milan – San Remo three times (1946, 1948 and 1949). In the 1946 Milan – San Remo he attacked with nine others, five kilometres into a race of 292 km. He dropped the rest on the Turchino climb and won by 14 minutes. He also won Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne (1950). He was also 1953 world road champion.

In 1952 Coppi won on the Alpe d'Huez, which had been included for the first time that year. He attacked six kilometres from the summit to rid himself of the French rider, Jean Robic. Coppi said: "I knew he was no longer there when I couldn't hear his breathing any more or the sound of his tyres on the road behind me." He rode like "a Martian on a bicycle", said Raphaël Géminiani. "I saw a phenomenal rider that day." Coppi won the Tour by 28m 27s and the organiser, Jacques Goddet, had to double the prizes for lower placings to keep other riders interested. It was his last Tour, having ridden three and won two.

Bill McGann wrote:

Comparing riders from different eras is a risky business subject to the prejudices of the judge. But if Coppi isn't the greatest rider of all time, then he is second only to Eddy Merckx. One can't judge his accomplishments by his list of wins because World War II interrupted his career just as World War I interrupted that of Philippe Thys. Coppi won it all: the world hour record, the world championships, the ''grands tours'', classics as well as time trials. The great French cycling journalist, Pierre Chany says that between 1946 and 1954, once Coppi had broken away from the peloton, the peloton never saw him again. Can this be said of any other racer? Informed observers who saw both ride agree that Coppi was the more elegant rider who won by dint of his physical gifts as opposed to Merckx who drove himself and hammered his competition relentlessly by being the very embodiment of pure will.

Hour record

Coppi broke the world hour record on the track in Milan on 7 November 1942. He rode a 93.6 inch (7.47 metre) gear and pedaled with an average cadence of 103.3rpm. The bike is on display in the chapel of Madonna del Ghisallo near Como, Italy. His times were: {| style="width:100%;" |- |valign="top"|

1 km: 01:17

2 km: 02:36

3 km: 03:53

4 km: 05:12

5 km: 06:30

|valign="top"|

10 km: 13:02

15 km: 19:35

20 km: 26:08

30 minutes: 22.946 km

25 km: 32:41

|valign="top"|

30 km: 39:14

35 km: 45:47

40 km: 52:19

45 km: 58:5

Hour: 45.871 km, later corrected to 45.798 km

|}

Coppi beat Maurice Archambaud's 45.767 km, set five years earlier on the same track. The record stood until it was beaten by Jacques Anquetil in 1956.

Rivalry with Bartali

Coppi's racing days are generally referred to as the beginning of the golden years of cycle racing. A factor is the competition Coppi had with Gino Bartali. Italian ''tifosi'' (fans) divided into ''coppiani'' and ''bartaliani''. Bartali's rivalry with Coppi divided Italy. Bartali, conservative, religious, was venerated in the rural, agrarian south, while Coppi, more worldly, secular, innovative in diet and training, was hero of the industrial north. The writer Curzio Malaparte said:

Bartali belongs to those who believe in tradition... he is a metaphysical man protected by the saints. Coppi has nobody in heaven to take care of him. His manager, his masseur, have no wings. He is alone, alone on a bicycle... Bartali prays while he is pedalling: the rational Cartesian and sceptical Coppi is filled with doubts, believes only in his body, his motor.

Their lives came together on 7 January 1940 when Eberardo Pavesi, head of the Legnano team, took on Coppi to ride for Bartali. Their rivalry started when Coppi, the helping hand, won the Giro and Bartali, the star, marshalled the team to chase. By the 1948 world championship at Valkenburg (South Holland) in the Netherlands, both climbed off rather than help the other. The Italian cycling association said: "They have forgotten to honour the Italian prestige they represent. Thinking only of their personal rivalry, they abandoned the race, to the approbation of all sportsmen." They were suspended for three months.

The thaw partly broke when the pair shared a bottle on the Col d'Izoard in the 1952 Tour but the two fell out over who had offered it. "I did," Bartali insisted. "He never gave me anything." Their rivalry was the subject of intense coverage and resulted in epic races.

Prisoner of war

Coppi joined the army as soldier 7375 of the 38th Infantry when Italy entered the second world war. Officers favoured him at first to keep him riding his bike but in March 1943 they sent him to North Africa. There he was taken prisoner by the British between Mateur and Medjez-el-Bab on 13 April 1943. He was kept in a prisoner of war camp, where he shared plates with the father of Claudio Chiappucci, who rode the Tour in the 1990s. He was given odd jobs to do. The British cyclist Len Levesley said he was astonished to find Coppi giving him a haircut. Levesley, who was on a stretcher with polio, said:

I should think it took me all of a full second to realise who it was. He looked fine, he looked slim, and having been in the desert, he looked tanned. I'd only seen him in cycling magazines but I knew instantly who he was. So he cut away at my hair and I tried to have a conversation with him, but he didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian. But we managed one or two words and I got over to him that I did some club racing. And I gave him a bar of chocolate that I had with me and he was grateful for that and that was the end of it.

The British moved Coppi to an RAF base at Caserta in Italy in 1945. There he worked for an officer who had never heard of him. Coppi was allowed liberal terms, the war being as good as over. On release he cycled and hitched lifts home. On Sunday 8 July 1945 he won the Circuit of the Aces in Milan after four years without racing. The following season he won Milan – San Remo (about this years see also "Viva Coppi!", historical novel by Filippo Timo).

Drugs

Coppi was often said to have introduced "modern" methods to cycling, particularly his diet. Gino Bartali established that some of those methods included taking drugs, which were not then against the rules.

Bartali and Coppi appeared on television revues and sang together, Bartali singing about "The drugs you used to take" as he looked at Coppi. Coppi spoke of the subject in a television interview:

:''Question'': Do cyclists take ''la bomba'' (amphetamine)? :''Answer'': Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it's not worth talking to them about cycling. :''Question'': And you, did you take ''la bomba''? :''Answer'': Yes. Whenever it was necessary. :''Question'': And when was it necessary? :''Answer'': Almost all the time!

Coppi "set the pace" in drug-taking, said his contemporary, the Dutchman, Wim van Est. Rik van Steenbergen said Coppi was "the first I knew who took drugs." That didn't stop Coppi's protesting against others using it. He told René de Latour:

Coppi named four riders among the best in the world as amateurs but who failed as professionals despite predictions made for them. "If they sue me for defamation," he said, "all the better. The facts will be brought to light and this may mean a change in our methods."

Broken bones

Coppi broke bones throughout his career.

1942: collarbone at the Vigorelli track in Milan

1950: pelvis in the Giro d'Italia

1951: collarbone in Milan-Turin

1952: shoulder blade on the track in Perpignan

1954: head and knees while training

1956: displaced vertebra in Giro d'Italia

1957: thigh in Sardinia

1959: head injuries while training

The Woman in White

The Woman in White was Giulia Occhini, described by the French broadcaster Jean-Paul Ollivier as "strikingly beautiful with thick chestnut hair divided into enormous plaits." She was married to an army captain, Enrico Locatelli. Coppi was married to Bruna Ciampolini. Locatelli was a cycling fan. His wife wasn't but she joined him on 8 August 1948 to see the Tre Valli Varesine race. Their car was caught beside Coppi's in a traffic jam. That evening Occhini went to Coppi's hotel and asked for a photograph. He wrote "With friendship to...", asked her name and then added it. From then on the two spent more and more time together.

Italy was a straight-laced country in which adultery was thought of poorly. In 1954, Luigi Boccaccini of ''La Stampa'' saw her waiting for Coppi at the end of a race in St-Moritz. She and Coppi hugged and ''La Stampa'' printed a picture in which she was described as ''la dama in bianco di Fausto Coppi'' - the "woman in white".

It took only a while to find out who she was. She and Coppi moved in together but so great was the scandal that the landlord of their apartment in Tortona demanded they move out. Reporters pursued them to a hotel in Casteletto d'Orba and again they moved, buying the Villa Carla, a house near Novi Ligure. There police raided them at night to see if they were sharing a bed. Pope Pius XII asked Coppi to return to his wife. He refused to bless the Giro d'Italia when Coppi rode it. The Pope then went through the Italian cycling federation. Its president, Bartolo Paschetta, wrote on 8 July 1954:

"Dear Fausto, yesterday evening St. Peter made it known to me that the news [of adultery] had caused him great pain."

Bruna Ciampolini refused a divorce. To end a marriage was shameful and still illegal in some parts of the country. Coppi was shunned and spectators spat at him. He and Giulia Occhini had a son, Faustino.

Decline

Coppi's career declined after the scandal. He had already been hit in 1951 by the death of his younger brother, Serse Coppi who crashed in a sprint in the Giro del Piemonte and died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Coppi could never match his old successes. Pierre Chany said he was first to be dropped each day in the Tour of Spain in 1959. Criterium organisers frequently cut their races to 45 km to be certain that Coppi could finish, he said. "Physically, he wouldn't have been able to ride even 10km further. He charged himself [took drugs] before every race." Coppi, said Chany, was "a magnificent and grotesque washout of a man, ironical towards himself; nothing except the warmth of simple friendship could penetrate his melancholia. But I'm talking of the end of his career. The last year! In 1959! I'm not talking about the great era. In 1959, he wasn't a racing cyclist any more. He was just clinging on [''il tentait de sauver les meubles'']"

Jacques Goddet wrote in an appreciation of Coppi's career in ''L'Équipe'': We would like to have cried out to him ' ''Stop''!' And as nobody dared to, destiny took care of it."

Death

In December 1959, the president of Burkina Faso, Maurice Yaméogo, invited Coppi, Raphaël Géminiani, Jacques Anquetil, Louison Bobet, Roger Hassenforder and Henry Anglade to ride against local riders and then go hunting. Géminiani remembered:

Both caught malaria and fell ill when they got home. Géminiani said:

Geminiani was diagnosed as being infected with ''plasmodium falciparum'', one of the more fatal strains of malaria. Géminiani recovered but Coppi died, his doctors convinced he had a bronchial complaint. ''La Gazzetta dello Sport'', the Italian daily sports paper, published a Coppi supplement. The editor wrote that he prayed that God would soon send another Coppi.

Death investigation

In January 2002 a man identified only as Giovanni, who lived in Burkina Faso until 1964, said Coppi died not of malaria but died of an overdose of cocaine. The newspaper Corriere dello Sport said Giovanni had his information from Angelo Bonazzi. Giovanni said: "It is Angelo who told me that Coppi had been killed. I was a supporter of Coppi, and you can imagine my state when he told me that Coppi had been poisoned in Fada Gourma, at the time of a reception organised by the head of the village. Angelo also told me that [Raphael] Géminiani was also present… Fausto's plate fell, they replaced it, and then…"

The story has also been attributed to a 75-year-old Benedictine monk called Brother Adrien. He told Mino Caudullo of the Italian National Olympic Committee: "Coppi was killed with a potion mixed with grass. Here in Burkina Faso this awful phenomenon happens. People are still being killed like that." Coppi's doctor, Ettore Allegri, dismissed the story as "absolute drivel."

A court in Tortona opened an investigation and asked toxicologists about exhuming Coppi's body to look for poison. A year later, without exhumation, the case was dismissed.

Legacy

The Giro remembers Coppi as it goes through the mountain stages. A mountain bonus, called the ''Cima Coppi'', is awarded to the first rider who reaches the Giro's highest summit. In 1999, Coppi placed second in balloting for greatest Italian athlete of the 20th century.

Major results by year

;1940 :Giro d'Italia: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner stage 11

;1941 :Giro di Toscana :Giro dell'Emilia :Giro del Veneto :Tre Valli Varesine

;1942 :Hour record - 45.798 km (Milan, Velodromo Vigorelli) : Italian National Road Race Championship

;1946 :Milan – San Remo :Giro di Lombardia :Grand Prix des Nations :Giro della Romagna :Giro d'Italia: ::Winner stages 4, 13 and 14

;1947 :Giro d'Italia: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner stages 4, 8 and 16 :Giro di Lombardia :Grand Prix des Nations : Italian National Road Race Championship :Giro della Romagna :Giro del Veneto :Giro dell'Emilia

;1948 :Milan – San Remo :Giro di Lombardia :Giro d'Italia: ::Winner Mountains classification ::Winner stages 16 and 17 :Giro dell'Emilia :Tre Valli Varesine

;1949 :Giro d'Italia: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner Mountains classification ::Winner stages 4, 11 and 17 :Tour de France: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner Mountains classification ::Winner stages 7, 17 and 20 :Milan – San Remo :Giro di Lombardia : Italian National Road Race Championship :Giro della Romagna :Giro del Veneto

;1950 :Paris–Roubaix :La Flèche Wallonne

;1951 :Tour de France: ::Winner stage 20 :Giro d'Italia: ::Winner stages 6 and 18 :Gran Premio di Lugano

;1952 :Giro d'Italia: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner stages 5, 11 and 14 :Tour de France: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner Mountains classification ::Winner stages 7, 10, 11, 18 and 21 :Gran Premio di Lugano

;1953 : World Road Cycling Championships :Giro d'Italia: ::20px Winner overall classification ::Winner stages 4, 19 and 20 :Trofeo Baracchi

;1954 :Giro d'Italia: ::Winner Mountains classification ::Winner stage 20 :Giro di Lombardia :Coppa Bernocchi :Trofeo Baracchi

;1955 :Giro d'Italia: ::Winner stage 20 : Italian National Road Race Championship :Giro dell'Appennino :Tre Valli Varesine :Trofeo Baracchi

;1956 :Gran Premio di Lugano

;1957 :Trofeo Baracchi

Grand Tour results timeline

!1940

!1941

!1942

!1943

!1944

!1945

!1946

!1947

!1948

!1949

!1950

!1951

!1952

!1953

!1954

!1955

!1956

!1957

!1958

!1959

Giro d'Italia>Giro

Tour de France>Tour

style="text-align:center; background:#0f0;"

style="text-align:center; background:#eee8aa;"

style="text-align:center; background:#0f0;"

Vuelta a España>Vuelta

See also

List of doping cases in cycling

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111989/combined Movie (1995) Il Grande Fausto

Notes

References

External links

Tribute to Fausto Coppi

{{s-ttl|title=UCI hour record (45.798 km) |years=7 November 1942–29 June 1956}}

Category:1919 births Category:1960 deaths Category:People from the Province of Alessandria Category:Italian cyclists Category:UCI World Champions Category:Giro d'Italia winners Category:Italian Giro d'Italia stage winners Category:Tour de France winners Category:Italian Tour de France stage winners Category:Deaths from malaria Category:Doping cases in cycling Category:Infectious disease deaths in Italy

als:Fausto Coppi ca:Fausto Coppi cs:Fausto Coppi da:Fausto Coppi de:Fausto Coppi es:Fausto Coppi eu:Fausto Coppi fr:Fausto Coppi gl:Fausto Coppi hr:Fausto Coppi it:Fausto Coppi la:Faustus Coppi lv:Fausto Kopi lb:Fausto Coppi hu:Fausto Coppi nl:Fausto Coppi ja:ファウスト・コッピ no:Fausto Coppi pms:Fausto Coppi nds:Fausto Coppi pl:Fausto Coppi pt:Fausto Coppi ru:Коппи, Фаусто sc:Fausto Coppi simple:Fausto Coppi sk:Fausto Coppi sr:Фаусто Копи fi:Fausto Coppi sv:Fausto Coppi

Giovanni Pesce (Visone, 22 February 1918 – Milan, 27 July 2007) was an Italian anti-fascist partisan who fought in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. A former Communist councillor for Milan, he wrote extensively about his experiences in several books.

Early life

Pesce was raised in Grand Combe near Nîmes, France, the son of working class immigrants from Piedmont, Italy. His father worked as a low-paid miner and his mother ran a restaurant for miners out of the family's home. The mining community was populated mostly by immigrants, especially Italians. After he completed his education, Pesce began working in the mines as a teenager. Through living around and working in the mines, he discovered socialist and left-wing politics—both especially popular among the immigrant miners—and became a convinced communist. Along with the other miners, he struggled for better wages and working conditions through demonstrations and related activism.

Spanish Civil War

When Pesce was still in his teens, he volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Pesce fought among International Brigade volunteers from several dozen other nations, saw a lot of action, and successfully used both machine guns and light anti-tank small arms.

World War II

Pesce's Spanish Civil War career ended with incarceration as a prisoner of war among fellow International Brigade volunteers. When he got out, he went to Piedmont to stay with his extended family, and discovered first-hand the fascism that had taken hold there. Connecting with other ex-International Brigade fighters and communist activists, he seamlessly made the transition from anti-Franco Spanish Civil War fighter to Italian World War II anti-fascist and anti-Nazi partisan. As a member of the GAP (Gruppi di Azione Populari), Pesce lived clandestinely, and planned and participated in many successful partisan guerilla actions (including sabotage and assassinations against Italian fascists, German military personnel, and their collaborators) throughout World War II years. His codename for part of the war was "Visone", which is both a province of Piedmont and the Italian word for mink. The Germans and fascists discovered Pesce's significance and codename, but although they used their anti-partisan personnel to try to find and capture him, they never succeeded.

Pesce survived the war and wrote about his experiences. He died on July 27, 2007 in Milan.

Notable actions

Hidden V-2 / V-2 Fuse Mechanism Factory

Pesce planned an attack against a hidden, secret factory that was producing crucial parts for V-1 and V-2 rockets. Around that time the rockets were being used ''en masse'' by the Germans to attack civilian areas on the coast of Britain. On the afternoon of December 9, 1945, he and other GAP volunteers executed the attack. The GAP set their bombs to go off immediately after the workers left for the day, so that the workers would not be injured. After the bombs exploded, Pesce walked among the throng of workers to distribute anti-fascist fliers explaining the action (the purpose of the factory had been kept secret from the workers) and shout anti-fascist slogans before he fled.

Colonel Cesarini

In March, 1945, Pesce planned and single-handedly carried out the assassination of Colonel Cesarini, an Italian fascist who had overseen a massive wave of arrests and deportations to German concentration camps of Italian factory workers (anti-fascist sentiment had been running high in the factory). In broad daylight and on a crowded city street, Pesce used revolvers to kill both Cesarini and Cesarini's bodyguard.

References

Sources

''And No Quarter: An Italian Partisan in World War II, Memoirs of Giovanni Pesce,'' translated by Frederick M. Shaine, Ohio University Press, 1972, ISBN 8214-0081-9.

Category:People of the Spanish Civil War Category:1918 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Burials at the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano Category:Italian communists Category:People from the Province of Alessandria

it:Giovanni Pesce

Silvio Pellico (24 June 1789 – 31 January 1854) was an Italian writer, poet, dramatist and patriot.

Biography

Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo (Piedmont). He spent the earlier portion of his life at Pinerolo and Turin, under the tuition of a priest named Manavella. At the age of ten he composed a tragedy inspired by a translation of the Ossianic poems. On the marriage of his twin sister Rosina with a maternal cousin at Lyon, he went to reside in that city, devoting himself during four years to the study of French literature. He returned in 1810 to Milan, where he became professor of French in the Collegio degli Orfani Militari.

His tragedy ''Francesca da Rimini'' was brought out with success by Carlotta Marchionni at Milan in 1818. Its publication was followed by that of the tragedy ''Euphemio da Messina'', but the representation of the latter was forbidden.

Pellico had in the meantime continued his work as tutor, first to the unfortunate son of Count Briche, and then to the two sons of Count Porro Lambertenghi. He threw himself heartily into an attempt to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means.

Of the powerful literary executive which gathered about Counts Porro and Confalonieri, Pellico was the able secretary the management of the ''Conciliatore'', a review which appeared in 1818 as the organ of the association, resting largely upon him. But the paper, under the censorship of the Austrian officials, ran for a year only, and the society itself was broken up by the government. In October 1820 Pellico was arrested on the charge of carbonarism and conveyed to the Santa Margherita prison. After his removal to the Piombi at Venice in February 1821, he composed several Cantiche and the tragedies ''Ester d'Engaddi'' and ''Iginici d'Asti''. The sentence of death pronounced on him in February 1822 was finally commuted to fifteen years of jail in harsh condition, and in the following April he was placed in the Spielberg, at Brünn (today's Brno), where he was transferred via Udine and Ljubljana. His chief work during this part of his imprisonment was the tragedy ''Leoniero da Dertona'', for the preservation of which he was compelled to rely on his memory. After his release in 1830 he commenced the publication of his prison compositions, of which the Ester was played at Turin in 1831, but immediately suppressed. In 1832 appeared his ''Gismonda da Mendrizio'', ''Erodiade'' and the ''Leoniero'', under the title of ''Tre nuove tragedie'', and in the same year the work which gave him his European fame, ''Le mie prigioni'', an account of his sufferings in prison. The last gained him the friendship of the Marchesa di Barolo, the reformer of the Turin prisons, and in 1834 he accepted from her a yearly pension of 1200 francs. His tragedy ''Tommaso Moro'' had been published in 1833, his most important subsequent publication being the ''Opere inedite'' in 1837.

On the decease of his parents in 1838 he was received into the Casa Barolo, where he remained until his death, assisting the marchesa in her charities, and writing chiefly upon religious themes. Of these works the best known is the ''Dei doveri degli uomini'', a series of trite maxims which do honor to his piety rather than to his critical judgment. A fragmentary biography of the marchesa by Pellico was published in Italian and English after her death.

He died in 1854, and was buried in the Camposanto at Turin.

While Pellico's tragedies are generally considered mediocre, the simple narrative and naive egotism of ''Le mie prigioni'' has established his strongest claim to remembrance, winning fame by his misfortunes rather than by his genius. Genius or not, "My prisons" most certainly led to the political genius that was the Italian Risorgimento and Unification. The pamphlet was translated into virtually every European language during Pellico's lifetime.

Popular culture

Silvio Pellico gave his name to a little community (1,500 inhabitants) founded in Argentina by Italian immigrants from Saluzzo.

References

External links

Silvio Pellico Poems

Category:1788 births Category:1854 deaths Category:Italian dramatists and playwrights Category:Italian writers Category:Italian people of the Risorgimento Category:Carbonari Category:People from Saluzzo

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