I recently received a note from Dr. John Telford in Detroit, Michigan. Many of you will remember John as one of the nation's top 440 yard runners in the late 1950's. He competed for Wayne State University in his undergrad days. His letter contains a poem he wrote about Giovanni Scavo, an Italian runner of great promise, who died prematurely in a car crash in Italy. John had raced against Giovanni only a short time before the accident.
Giovanni Scavo John Telford
Downtown Monitor
GREATER DETROIT'S ORIGINAL FREE PAPER THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024 —
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2024
p. 4
In 1957, in summer-time Bologna,
/ Upon *REUNIONE INTERNAZIONALE,
/ I defeated Scavo in the QUATTROCIENTO METRI.
/ I was twenty-one; he'd just turned nineteen
/ ATLETICA LEGGERA'S *ENFANTE IL TERRIBLE!
/ Before the race the sold-out crowd
/ Had chanted "Scah-vo!" really loud.
/ Afterward we traded pins and promised that we'd write:
/From ITALIA by slow freighter
/Came this letter two months later—
/ "John and Gio run one-two in
/ Rome Olympics, 1960!"
/ Just before, I'd read he'd driven
/Fast and far in his Ferrari
/ Toward the reaches of the Marches,
/ From the famed Eternal City—
/ Crashing high up on a mountain
/ Near the heights of the Abruzzi
/ And there died in his Ferrari.
/ ITALIA mourned her ***CAMPEONE—
/ The champion runner, Giovanni.
Pronunciation - *RAY-YOU-nee-OH-nay EEN-tair-NATCH-ee-oh-NAH-lay
**AIN-FON-tay EEL-tair-EE-blay
***KOM-pay-OH-nay
John Telford, Giovanni Scavo, and Lang Stanley
In late June of 1988, long after that hard 400-meter race
(see above post-race photo of me, Scavo, and my U.S. teammate
Lang Stanley), I was vacationing in Cancun with my wife and
daughter, and we were seated at a dinner floor show with an
Italian gentleman and his wife and daughters. He had been
in the crowd in Bologna when I raced against Scavo, and he
had kept a scrapbook on him. When I showed him my identi-
fication, he insisted on paying for our drinks and our dinners.
Back in early August of 1957 when I had arrived home to De-
troit from that European track tour, I read in the newspaper
of Scavo's death; then in September, the mailman delivered
his late-coming letter to me: it was like getting a letter from
a ghost.
-Dr. John Telford is a former superintendent of the Detroit Public
Schools. Read his columns in the Detroit Native Sun, hear him on WCHB
AM1340 Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. and Mondays at 6:30 p.m., on WJZZ TV
Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m., and on DETipTV.com all week 24/7.
Contact him at DrJohnTelfordEdD or at 313-460-8272
In researching this post, I found the following article (translated from Italian) about another untimely death of an Italian runner Giorgio Lo Giudice. Giovanni Scavo is also mentioned, and it sometimes gets confusing who the writer is talking about. The translation is not into the most understandable English. I've edited it a bit to help. George
Giovanni Scavo, a memory lasting 60 years
05 April 2019
Brilliant middle distance talent, probable protagonist of the Rome '60 Games, died at the age of 23 in a car accident on 9 April 1959
by Giorgio Cimbrico
“We met by chance in Bari, for a Intermilitary meeting, and he asked me if I could give him a hand with the (pacing in the )1500: he needed it to prepare for the 800 for the Athlete's Easter. 'Of course I'll give you a hand', I replied: I led up to 1000 and he won in a time that I think was around 4 minutes. Three days later I read in the newspaper that he was dead": this is the story of Giorgio Lo Giudice, the same age as Giovanni Scavo , swept away at the age of 23, like his old Vespa, hit by a car near the Stadio delle Palme, in Palermo , sixty years ago.
“The heroes are all young and beautiful”, sang Francesco Guccini. And those who are taken by destiny after a few, very few years spent on this earth end up conquering a special aura, counterpointed by a forest of "ifs", of unanswered questions, to be placed in dimensions unattainable except with imagination or affection: would it have been Giovanni Scavo who deprived Mario Lanzi of a historic Italian 800 record? Could he have troubled Peter Snell and Roger Moens in the Olympic final in Rome, which took place a year and a half after his death? Questions that are repeated by those who have retained a memory of the young man who saw the light in Ascoli Piceno, but he of paternal Sicilian roots (his father was a colonel), which is close to a cult, like one of the clubs in Velletri - a Roman town where I had moved - who associated that surname with the company name and is about to remember the sixtieth anniversary of that broken life.
In all human and sporting events there is a day of days: for Scavo it was June 21, 1957, in the Parisian stadium named after a champion who fell in 1914, in the first autumn of the war: Jean Bouin, known as the little Hercules of Marseille. At the start Giovanni found the Hungarian Lajos Szentgali, European champion three years earlier at the Wankdorf in Bern, and above all the Belgian Roger Moens who in '55, in the Bislett of Oslo, a crossroads of historical limits, in 1:45.7 had put an end , after sixteen years, to the long reign of Rudolf Harbig. That 1:46.6 at the Milan Arena, shortly before the storm of the Second World War began (which would devour the magnificent Saxon) was a dive into the future, exactly like Jesse Owens' 8.13. Mario Lanzi, a solid "Ligurian" (as Gianni Brera liked to point out) born on the banks of Ticino, ran 1:49, finding himself among the best ever.
In Paris Moens closed just above 1:47 ahead of Szentgali, 1:48.9, and Scavo who in 1:49.2 came close to one of the noblest limits of Italian athletics. Almost four months later, in the closing meeting of the season at the Olimpico (13 October of the 5000m world record, set by Vladimir Kuts at 13:35.6), Gianni would provide solid confirmation: 1:49.3, behind the Greek Depastas .
Just like Harbig and Lanzi, Scavo possessed, in addition to elegance, a strong ability to carry speed. This is demonstrated by his personal best in the 400m, 47.2, which he achieved the following year, the season that saw him come close to an important podium: at the European Championships, held at the Olympic stadium in Stockholm, fourth in the 4x400m, a few tenths behind bronze medalist Sweden, in the company of Nereo Fossati, Mario Fraschini and Renzo Panciera.
Inserted on the list of probable Olympians, Giovanni had left Rome after Assicurazioni Generali had guaranteed him a job as an accountant in the Palermo office. That day he had gone to book a seat on the flight to Milan. For that Easter that he didn't run.
Bill Schnier "These stories remind me of Pre and Ivo Van Damme. If you have ever been in Italy you know that they drive like maniacs, always taking major chances. Thanks for remembering these people thereby enabling others to realize they actually existed and their lives were not lived in vain."
In re-reading Dr. Telford's work, I'm reminded of two sculptures. First The Dying Gaul a Greek work copied over by the Romans. The Dying Gaul, also called The Dying Galatian or The Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman marble semi-recumbent statue now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. It is a copy of a now lost Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period thought to have been made in bronze. Wikipedia
And then The Dying Warrior
From the Glyptotek in Munich
No comments:
Post a Comment