For our part we just want to open the news with the front page of the best known Italian sports newspaper of 22 July 1952.

 

 

 

The memory of Maurizio Damilano (Olympic Champion in Moscow 1980)

Talking about Pino Dordoni always involves the risk of telling him through memories that do not fully complete his figure.

Telling him only through his most important victory, the one that saw him triumphantly enter the Olympic stadium in Helsinki 70 years ago, would be to close him in a parenthesis.

Pino was much more than a great athlete, an attentive coach and a passionate manager.

Pino has been a guide, a reference, a staple for generations and generations of walkers, coaches, managers, organisers, in short, of that world that is the people of race walking.

He was the same for us too: the three Damilano brothers.

He was first a myth, then a teacher and above all a friend.

Telling Pino through the many anecdotes concerning him would therefore be absolutely reductive. It would be to tell a father referring only to what he taught, forgetting all that he left as an imprint in the life of his children.

He was a teacher of life. His rigor and his firmness sometimes made him pass for grumpy, but in the end they were the figure of what he sowed and reaped, of the idea of ​​making people grow first, men and women than champions.

There are moments of our relationship that are unforgettable for what was then our sporting path. All three of us drank from him from his source of knowledge of this world made up of fairness and attention, of knowledge and relationships, of mediation and acceptance, but above all of consistency with the history of the discipline: complex but full of passion like few others.

And it is precisely in knowing how to always combine tradition with modernity that Pino was the architect of the growth of the sector that he has guided with rigor and passion for many years.

He has always been a "purist" of the technical gesture, but not romantically ancient. He has been able to walk over the years and in the changes that race walking has had from a technical and stylistic point of view, always knowing how to coherently combine the two aspects.

He did not like the "bad" walk, the one that went beyond acceptable limits by changing the philosophy itself, but at the same time he knew how to grasp and support a modernisation that saw it become more dynamic and faster.

We do not know if he would love the changes that have taken place in these almost 25 years of his absence, but we are sure that he would find reasons and ideas for his beloved race walk to continue to be central in the athletic system.

We are sure he would look forward as always, but without forgetting that the roots cannot be broken.

Maurizio Damilano

The memory of Franco Bragagna (the voice of athletics for RAI-TV at Sapporo 2021 and Oregon 2022)

That time when Pino Dordoni and I played volleyball in Prague.

Yes, figuratively, you will understand why. It was more beach volleyball that had just taken its first Olympic steps (a few months earlier, in Atlanta), beach volleyball because we played in pairs.

Prague, on the evening of Friday 18 April. Official reception in the Hall of Honor of the Town Hall of the Czech capital. Pino called it Czechoslovakia, force of habit, but he always corrected himself a moment later ...

Pino, what a beautiful person he was: he would have left this World, not exactly walking heel&toe, a year and a half later in his Piacenza.

What a style that man, when he walked and also when he chatted amiably, the preference for the beloved technical gesture that no one (at most as he) had made noble more than him.

Not only that time seventy years ago when in the capital of Finland he gave a lesson in strength, not only in style, putting everyone in line ...

The highest point in Helsinki. Outside the stadium he arrived with some wisps out of place and inside the track perfectly combed: he had "pinched" him in the act of arranging his hair with a small comb a documentary from German TV (source-video and not only Piergiorgio Andreotti - Roman walker - and its archive).

In that beautiful Prague hall it was just fifty kilometers from Podēbrady (Czechia), where the World Cup of Race Walking would begin the following afternoon, the equivalent of a World Championship for Nations, the ancient "Lugano Trophy" which in Switzerland had invented themselves thirty-six years earlier.

Fifty kilometers perfect or so, so that from the edge of the capital to the center of the town of fifteen thousand inhabitants for years the legendary Praha-Podēbrady was organized, a fifty kilometer walk.

Those were good times: then the long Olympic distance of race walking was just fifty, as indeed in Helsinki '52.

Dordoni then and the aforementioned volleyball match. One moment more ...

In the hall of honor of the City Hall of the capital a sea of ​​people and many VIPs and super-VIPs invited by Primo Nebiolo, president of the then IAAF for another two and a half years, until his death.

I'm chatting amiably about race walking with Pino and with other journalists when here, followed by a very long queue, a couple. Apparently austere, the couple; actually affable, both she and him.

They see Pino and greet him with deference ...

"Uuuuh!", My jolt: Emil Zátopek and consequently she is Dana, the javelin-thrower wife.

They stop for a couple of minutes with Pino, after all colleagues: they are all Olympic champions!

Zátopková and Zátopek, wife and husband, will be the great protagonists of the evening. There is already a queue, just to exchange a greeting with them.

About twenty minutes later the journalist who dwells in me gets enticed: the idea is to have a chat with the (not) austere couple to steal for news of a few more episodes to use during the long commentary. An arduous undertaking, indeed “mission impossible”!

But no, here the beach volleyball match with Pino begins in a figurative sense. First my answer in "bagher (ed: slang)“, then Pino to dribble (strange, that was usually my role) and I to spike the ball.

Zatopek sees me, remembers seeing me with Dordoni minutes before, allows me to pass in front of a lot of people and - the magic of beach volleyball - here I am talking about javelin with Dana and middle distance with Emil, history and history sport and athletics with both.

A timid hint - but only mine, because I catch a hint of annoyance in their faces - to the Spring in the Czechoslovakian capital (it was Czechoslovakia at the time) and still on to talk about athletics and life.

Zátopek asks me where I come from. I answer Italy and Dana and Emil had guessed it, they had seen me next to Pino Dordoni. But then they also want to know where from. And I answer by talking about my town, Bolzano/Bozen, not much bigger than Podēbrady ...

"Ah, but then you speak German" - Zatopek tells me in German. And without waiting for my answer he continues speaking in excellent German. After all, Emil, who would die three and a half years later at seventy-eight, spoke five or maybe six languages. We continued to speak German, my second language, for nearly another five minutes, ten in all. It was only close to leaving I realised that Dana was a little annoyed, almost annoyed: she did not know German and would have preferred to continue in English. We all three laughed about the story of the abusive men, and she jokingly said, maybe not, that she was in charge at home!

Dana throws darts in the athletic paradise from March 2020: she left at the very beginning of the pandemic and not for this reason, at ninety-seven and a half years ...

Thanks, Pino: “bagher”, winning pass and spike ball ! Or assist yours, if you think so: how nice it was to chat with you, not just about race walking!

Seventy years later, still dutifully ready to talk and write about you and above all about that time there, that of Helsinki of course, not of the "Czech-Slovak" capital ...

Franco Bragagna

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The memory of Guido Alessandrini (sports journalist and RAI-TV television commentator)

 

 

With Pino it was a question between families. For once, I take it personally because the story is ancient and involves him and three generations of my family.

 

It all started long before I knew who Cavalier Dordoni was (who was then a Commendatore, in hindsight), one afternoon in the early 1960s I spent watching a movie with my mother, when I was a child. On the screen there is the Newsreel, as it used to be, and the title of the "sport" section includes a short film of two gentlemen marching on the track. My indifference stops suddenly: "But look, there's Pino ! Always elegant ... ".

 

Here, the baptism with him, but also with race walking (and also in this case well before knowing that both of them - Dordoni and race walking, in fact - would also become an important chapter of my work) happened that afternoon.

 

The explanation of the first part of the story is simple: Piacenza. It was my grandmother and mother's home for several years, spanning the war. And there they met that thin, long boy "and so polite ...", said the grandmother. Who, a widow, arranged a poor salary by taking care of a laundry. There came the young athlete who every day had an absolute and essential need for clean clothing. “The shorts had to be white, freshly washed and also perfectly folded for the next day. But there was no money, so I took them home and ironed them for free. You know, he always wanted to be in order ”.

 

It is no coincidence that he asked for a comb a few kilometres from the finish line of the Helsinki stadium, before winning the Olympic gold which in this 2022-21 July celebrates 70 years. It had to be flawless there too. Obviously.

 

Pino was born on June 28, 1926, the same age as my mother and a friend of hers - not much more than a few chats, I presume - when they were teenagers. Then when I started writing about athletics and hanging out with walkers, he and my parents "used" me to greet each other from a distance. And every time he hugged me: “Ciao Piacentino”, even if I've never been from Piacenza. With some stories from my grandmother about that period: "He was a boy all in one piece. Always consistent. With a straight back. The Germans demanded that he abjure, but he refused. I saw it with my eyes and heard it with my ears ".

 

I checked at the source, that is, talking about it with the Cavaliere: “It's true. They wanted me to do something I didn't like. I refused. I don't betray, I don't turn my jacket for convenience ".

 

He told it like this, simply. With that strange and rolled-up "r" of him, that accent all of him, that humor that occasionally slipped into satire and that ritual greeting ("Goodbye!") that caused assorted superstitions.

 

I found him, even met him, following Maurizio Damilano (my first service as a newly hired correspondent for Tuttosport was in Scarnafigi, the day after the 1980 Moscow Olympic gold medal) who then told me how important it was for him. Dordoni in those years.

 

Finally he re-emerged a few weeks ago, when I went to visit Giusy Leone: “My first Olympics was in Helsinki. I was a little girl and I didn't even realise that the journey was interminable. Also because with us there were the myths from athletics: Consolini with his big hands and that funny guy Pino Dordoni, who never stopped telling ... ".

 

Others will say about what Dordoni has done in fifty years as an athlete and manager. The penultimate memory of him are a few lines from the Palasport in Genoa, in the winter of 1989, with Vittorio Visini's mobile phone who had called him at the hospital: "Pino, what are you doing?"

“Hello Piacentino. I have to stay here for a while, but I don't give up. See you when I go out ”.

His voice was a thread. I have never heard from it again.

 

Guido Alessandrini

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The memory of Piergiorgio Andreotti (athlete in Italian national team)

 

 

1952 “pre-Olympic” curtain

 

On that wonderful day of 21 July 1952 in which Pino Dordoni won the 50km walk at the Helsinki Olympics, a very nice extra sporty curtain took place a few meters from the marathon gate of the Olympic stadium.

 

From a film clip of a documentary on German television, dedicated to that edition of the Olympic Games, we see Pino Dordoni, clearly leading the race, receiving from a person standing upright in a convertible car in tow, a comb that the future Olympic Champion immediately uses to fix his hair.

Dordoni remembered the episode very well (and smiled at it), but he had never seen a documentation of this unimaginable quirk.

 

When, many years later, he was shown the short film by mutual friends and was urged to tell whoever had asked for the comb, Pino confessed that he had received it from the Swiss international judge, Armando Libotte, who was acting as Chief Race Walking Judge in 50km.

 

Armando Libotte had been a famous walker in his youth in the years at the turn of the First World War, then a well-known sports journalist and one of the most distinguished International Race Walking Judges. For many years he was also the leader of the SAL Lugano and the creator of the Lugano Trophy which, born in 1961, is considered the forerunner of the current World Athletics Race Walking Teams Championships.

It is nice to remember that Pino Dordoni was the Team Leader of the Italian national team for over 25 years.

 

This short curtain known in the world as "the comb of Helsinki" tells us everything about Dordoni's great style, not only in his walking technique, but also in his relationships with "those on the other side": in short, a great teacher of life .

 

Piergiorgio Andreotti

 

 

 

Videoclip of the race