Giorgio Zuccoli, a racing hound (with a heart of gold). To the very last

The late Giorgio Zuccoli is the first sailor to win the Sailor of the Year award in 1991/92, making him the first name to appear in the Hall of Fame of the most prestigious award in Italian sailing: was a great, always a protagonist on the race courses (he won the World Tornado Championships and participated in two Olympics), both as a sportsman and as a sailmaker (with Ullman Sails Italia). To the very last: the photo you see above is an image of Giorgio’s last great feat, at the helm of his Melges 24, his face already hollowed out by the evil that would shortly take him away, embraced by his teammates after winning the World Championship in La Rochelle in December 2000. (Read here the beautiful story behind the “golden cotter pin” Zuccoli gave to his friend Federico Michetti: an affair that reveals Giorgino’s heart of gold).

WHY WE HAD REWARDED HIM

Excerpted from The February 1992 Journal of Sailing.
: “The 34-year-old from Brescia in 1991 confirmed his undisputed supremacy in the Tornado class by winning a place on the Olympic team for the second time. During the season he also achieved another important goal, victory at the Tornado World Championship.”

WHO WAS GIORGIO ZUCCOLI
Giorgio Zuccoli (Giorgino) – (Iseo, February 17, 1958 – Borgonato, March 27, 2001). He was between the 1980s and 1990s an internationally renowned sailor and one of the world’s most highly regarded sailmakers (his sails for the Tornado Class won Gold Medals in Barcelona and Atlanta). A short but intense life began on Lake Iseo when little Giorgio began with his first broadsides aboard dad Gianni’s Flying, between Iseo, Sulzano and Monteisola, and then participated in the National Championships where he collected his first successes and medals, in the 420 Class, a specialist of catamarans and in particular in the Olympic Tornado Class, he was three times in the medal zone (in 1987, 1988 and 1989) and, won the World Title in Cagliari in 1991. He participated in two Olympics, in Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992 here shared with Isean bowman Angelo Glisoni. In 1993 he won the Centomiglia del Garda at the helm of the Classe Libera Dimore, setting a historical record that has not yet been broken, in six hours and five minutes. At the age of 42, in September 2000, already tried by illness, he won the last and most important title, the most deserved, the most poignant: the Gold Medal at the World Championship, in the Melges 24 Class, on the Atlantic at La Rochelle in France beating a fleet of more than a hundred boats, a much desired title that he chased for a long time and that he hit after two Silver Medals. In memory of the late champion, the Province of Brescia and the Municipality of Iseo will name the gymnasium of the Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Giacomo Antonietti ITCG Liceo IPIA in Iseo after Giorgio Zuccoli.

WHAT WE HAD WRITTEN

Taken from The Journal of Sailing, February 1992
: “Giorgio Zuccoli has been one of the world’s best helmsmen in the Tornado class since 1987. In that year for the first time, he had Luca Santella as bowman, landed on the podium at the world championship celebrating 100 years of the Kiel Yacht Club. Since then, steadily, this Brescian from the Sebina Nautical Association has been slyly hovering around the top step: third the following year at the Tallinn Worlds, even second in 1989 in Houston , Texas, beaten only by a particularly good sail trim by the winner, the Australian Booth. Last year’s setback in Medemblik, Netherlands, when the “school” or, if you prefer, “the example” Zuccoli also began to bear fruit, with two other Italian crews, that of the Pirinoli brothers and Ducati-Roveraro, appearing in the upper reaches of the international rankings.

The final victory came in September in the waters of Cagliari with Angelo Glisoni on the bow. The naturalness with which, from a colorless interlude in the 470 after a crackling debut in the 420 (Italian title in 1975), Zuccoli had arrived in the elite ranks of the highly technical Olympic catamaran, had led one to think of a miracle. Zuccoli, thanks also to the happy symbiosis-an unfortunately unique case on our shores-with his coach Franco Pivoli, has literally invented the Tornado class in Italy, and is also recognized as the “opinion maker” of the specialty, since he personally cuts not only his sails (Ulman Italia) but also those of most of the world fleet, and just one fact is valid for all: at the world championship in Cagliari, six of the top ten finishers used sails cut by the Brescian champion. For a long time it had seemed that Zuccoli was unable to win, that he was, in short, a splendid unfinished work. Now that he has so brutally disproved us, we are here to celebrate him.

Personal memories clutter the mind. On a June evening in Kiel in ’87 in the lobby of the Olympia Hotel in Kiel, immediately after the World Cup awards ceremony, Zuccoli’s eyes and Santella were swollen with disbelieving happiness, they walked restlessly, the whiteness of their smiles really made for tenderness. The first to be incredulous were really them, in a truly remarkable feat of modesty. There was no trace of that smile left in the monumental Pusan Marina during the 1988 Olympics at the end of the fifth race, the “tilt” one in the aft side, when some fuse blew in the certainty generator that must be the mind of a sailor who wants to win an Olympic medal. Out of that fall, I vividly remember the two shocked faces of Zuccoli and Santella as they pulled their Tornado soaked by the Sea of Japan to the ground, darkened by the gray Korean sky, came the magic that from one splendid but unable to win crew spawned two, one Tornado, one FD, both winning. On paper, however, the post-Pusan divorce between Zuccoli and Santella appeared tragic.

There was no equally technically sound sailor available in Italy to embark on the bow of the Tornado, and Zuccoli opted for his first old bowman from his 420 days, Angelo Glisoni, who had meanwhile given up competitive sailing. For Zuccoli, it was basically a matter of starting from scratch with all the countless disadvantages that come with it, but well determined also to take advantage of the few advantages such a situation offers. With tenacity, output after output, Zuccoli shaped Glisoni to his own use. He could do so because Glisoni himself had long been away from competition, but also because the chosen one was first and foremost a friend, sensitive and intelligent. Few remember-many directly do not-that on the Tornado the bowman constantly holds the mainsheet, is in short much more and much better than a mere helper, or a dynamic ballast as is sometimes the case on other Olympic classes. Glisoni did not simply become one of the best bowmen around, he became the bowman Zuccoli wanted. And this incomparable good fortune earned him the title of world champion, in which the small, talented and very modest Angelo Glisoni, can indeed claim great merit. That Zuccoli was an outlier we knew since 1987, but that aboard his Tornado the champions were two we found out late, through our own fault: sorry Angelo.”

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE SAILOR OF THE YEAR ROLL HERE