Athletics in mourning for Gustavo Pallicca

Gustavo Pallicca has died

Sad news shook Italian athletics on Thursday evening. Gone at the age of 87 in Florence is Gustavo Pallicca, competition judge, journalist, writer, executive, a true athletics enthusiast, a competent and attentive historical memory, a figure who in different guises spanned more than sixty years of our sport. Born in Turin (January 4, 1936), Tuscan by adoption, a basketball player in his youth, he became an athletics judge in ’62 and as a starter took part in the starting juries of hundreds of events, national and international, including the 1974 European Championships in Rome and the 1987 World Championships at the Olympic Stadium. Alongside his professional activities as a bank manager, he has also always cultivated his passion as a journalist, a contributor to the daily newspaper La Nazione and the federal magazine Atletica, but he has also held leadership roles in the FIDAL provincial committee of Pistoia, the city in which he was among the founders of the local club.

In more recent years, in order to make available his enormous knowledge of the subject and continue to delve into the histories and personalities of athletics, he has edited publications for the Federation’s Center for Studies and Research related to the world of race starters, collaborated with Roberto Quercetani in writing a volume on world sprinting from 1850 to 2005, edited in 2010 the work tracing the first 30 years of the Golden Gala, actively participated in the life of associations such as the Centro Studi e Documentazione Assi Giglio Rosso of Florence, the Bruno Bonomelli Italian Athletics Historical Archives, and the Italian Society of Sports History. For the Gruppo Giudici Gare, in recent years, he has edited the section on the federal website dedicated to stories and tales, including anecdotes and biographies. During his career he has been awarded the CONI Gold Star for Sports Merit and the 3rd Degree Oak, the Federation’s highest award. But most of all, he was appreciated and esteemed by those who knew him or by those who, thanks to his meticulous and professional signature, discovered the true essence of athletics and its protagonists.