Mario Mangiarotti, legend of Italian fencing, died at the age of 99
ROME – Mario Mangiarotti died, champion of the past of Italian and world fencing. He was 99 years old, his death in Bergamo after a brief illness. If with Edoardo (1919) and Dario (1915) one can speak of unique samples in the wake of paternal teaching, with Mario the history of fencing was shared from the beginning, from the school of his father Giuseppe Mangiarotti, one of the strongest swordsmen of his age and great leader, and the results are the more than 80 medals won by his students between the Olympics and the world.
Because his masterpiece was his sons: Edo, champion of the champions, infinite medal, cynical and overbearing talent; Dario, whimsical, acrobatic, inimitable, passed to professionalism immediately after the great victories of the post-war period.
Mario Mangiarotti, classical high school at the Milanese Berchet with the Fabbri brothers and the composer Carlo Alberto Rossi, studies at the Conservatory, then doctor and cardiologist of value, was the most normal "project" of father Giuseppe. But no less intriguing. His most complete student, "PO – possible Olympic", to the three weapons, first of all.
An esthete of fencing, his father said. And there is still a before and after World War II. Mario enters the national team of the sword in 1938, when Edo has already won team gold in Berlin and Dario has already been a holder for a few years. He is the fifth, sixth man in a team of immovable Olympic champions, he does the University Olympics, team gold in Vienna in 1939, but finishes second in the absolute in 1940.
In that year he reported himself as one of the most promising young European shakers. Giuseppe Mangiarotti had been to Budapest from Santelli, inventor of the modern saber and weapons master of the Habsburgs, on the eve of the First World War, and Mario is the proof of a complete school with three weapons. Then the war, the medical exams, the marriage with Eugenia Gavazzeni, a national foil match.
In 1947 he participated with her in the Paris Universiade: team gold with his brother Edo and individual sword bronze, before Edo himself and Carlo Pavesi. He works as a doctor in Bergamo, follows the specialist in Cardiology in Pavia, two nights a week he trains in Milan in Sala Mangiarotti, with which he wins for three years the Challange Le Coutre in Lausanne, the most prestigious European club trophy (1947, 1948 , 1949).
They were years in which some trophies, the Monal of sword in Paris, the Giovannini of fioretto in Bologna, counted almost as much as a world championship, certainly more difficult because there were all the strongest. Edoardo Mangiarotti was indeed very proud of his three Monals and three Giovanninis, despite the dozens of medals on the notice board. And the three brothers remain with the Sala Mangiarotti unbeaten for clubs.
For the rest it was always and in any case Italy-France, at the Mediterranean Games, team gold in 1951 for Mario and in the annual challenge of Genoa for the Mollié Cup, where he defends the national colors for five editions. In 1951 Mario was the Italian champion in the teams with Dario and Edoardo and third in the individual after them, for the first time he did not reserve but the holder of the World Cup in Stockholm, where he won the silver in sword teams. He will then continue to pull for a few years, even for the colors of the Garden Society. From 1947 to 1980 he was the international president of the Jury on the three arms.
In Bergamo, Mario Mangiarotti was a pioneer of Cardiology and Sports Medicine with Angelo Quarenghi, working first at the Gavazzeni Clinics and then at the San Francesco Nursing Home (Medicine and Cardiology), choosing the profession as a profession in the mid-1960s. As a sports manager he was president of Panathlon International for several terms and, for 25 years, provincial president of CONI. On his mask, and not only, was the motto "Never Dead". (source AGI)
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