Former Italian athlete Livio Berruti yesterday recalled that magic moment in 1960 at Rome's Olympic Stadium when, against all expectations, he won the 200m final to win a memorable gold medal for Italy.
He was addressing journalists at the Radisson Baypoint Resort Hotel. He is in Malta as guest of the Sportswriters Association on the occasion of yesterday's finals night in the national sporting contests.
Berruti said it was a beautiful moment in his sporting life. "It was unexpected. The Americans were the great favourites, especially Ray Norton, but I found my best form at the right moment. I really enjoyed it. Those days we did not run for money, just for the fun of it. Everything went well for me, especially having overcome the problem of resistance – before the event I did not know whether I would resist till the end. But I overcame that obstacle as well on my way to victory," he said.
He recalled that he had started a career in the 200m after the Italian federation did not accept a protest by his father. "He thought I was being forced too much. Luckily, the federation did not accept my father's request and I went on to the Olympics where some ‘strange’ things happened. When I qualified to run the semi-final of the event, I was not told who my opponents would be. But on entering the track, I soon noticed that they included the top three in the world, that is Ray Norton, Johnson and the UK's Peter Radford. I soon realised I had to beat at least one of them to reach the final. I had run 21 secs in the heat and 20.8 in the quarter-final. In the semi-final I even surpassed that and clocked 20.5 to establish a new world record. I repeated that in the final, but I did not realise then and even the day after, that I had become a national hero. The emotion to be running in a final was great. I was disappointed as I was involved in a false start, but then I took the lead in the 'curva' and I maintained it till the very end. It was only on my way out of the stadium that I started realising what I had done. It was terrible to see between 100 and 200 fans all wanting to congratulate me. And the next day, I was even taken completely by surprise when someone came over to offer me a bouquet of flowers. I never expected such VIP treatment," he said.
Berruti said in those days, sport was different to what it is today. "There were no bonuses and no money involved. It was not too stressing as it is today with all the every day training that it involves to remain at the top. I only used to train twice a week. We did not have a lot of pressure even from sponsors. They were almost inexistent those days. Sport allowed us to live normal lives. It was nice and serene and there was absolutely no animosity between competitors. Today, if some athlete loses, he is also losing a lump sum of money," he said.
Berruti also said that after that 1960 success, he became very popular in Italy but in the last 30 years he worked for FIAT, mostly in their Public Relations office.
Between 1988 and 1992 he was also the vice-president of the Italian Federation, having missed out on the presidency after losing an election by just a few votes.