Life at its best of Beppe Croce, first great “emperor” of sailing

Beppe Croce was the first man to be simultaneously president of Italy’s oldest club, the Italian Yacht Club, of the Italian Sailing Federation and of the World Sailing Federation. Meanwhile, he was racing at the highest level with his Manuelas and in major offshore races such as the Admiral’s Cup. For pleasure he invented regattas that became myths such as the Giraglia and hosted the world jet-set in Portofino while thinking about the America’s Cup with Gianni Agnelli and John Kennedy. Croce has been a true emperor of sailing for three decades. We remember him 110 years after his birth

Beppe Croce, the emperor

“You should write us a nice piece on the most important man in Italian sailing“… This is the telephone premise to this article, which comes directly to me from the editor of this newspaper… He does not, of course, add who he has in mind, leaving yours truly at a loss.

In those few moments of silence, not wanting to be caught unprepared I mentally visualize a sort of personal pantheon of sailing that, I won’t say is crowded, but still leaves room for different perspectives on who has done more than whom, and on various ‘hierarchical’ levels quickly worked out while I am there on the phone.

The director senses the rattling of my thoughts and, of course, does not come to me in the expectation-somewhat sadistically-that I will be the one to give him that answer he is clear about. I accept the challenge, but I at least ask him if it is a living person. At this point I am sure I have impatient him and cut it short: “You have to write me a nice portrait of Beppe Croce – born 110 years ago – he is obviously the person who has done the most for sailing in Italy and has been very prominent all over the world“. He is right.

Beppe Croce, man of the world

Andrea Giuseppe Croce, who quickly became Beppe was born on December 11, 1914, into a large middle-class family in Genoa; his grandparents were successful men in business, in possession of considerable wealth, interested in politics, culture and sports, friends of famous men in prewar Italy. A grandfather, Emilio Borzino, was president of the Liberal Party until 1927; his house was frequented, Beppe recalled, by Benedetto Croce, Luigi Einaudi, Marcello Soleri, and General Caviglia. His other grandfather, Beppe like him, had founded the tennis federation, of which he was the first president, and once had the Davis Cup played in his home gardens in Nervi, where he had set up grass courts.

It is difficult not to benefit from such contexts in the foundational stages of growing up and youth in a lively city and in a family framework that was, yes, affluent, but capable of equipping young Beppe Croce with all the virtues that will make him a great gentleman and, as they say, a perfect man of the world. To this magnificent and fortunate cocktail, all that is needed to stop the needle of the compass on young Croce’s future is a small spark… and it is thanks to another Beppe that this happens, with the gift of a Dinghy 12′ that he receives at the age of 9 from his grandfather as a reward for brilliant scholastic achievements.

Cross’s sense of sailing

Alea iacta est: but total dedication still needs to wait several years. Beppe Croce thanks to the Dinghy began his solo career, fell in love with sailing and learned to sail. But these are difficult years with the country plagued by two world conflicts. In fact, precisely because of the First, in 1918 Beppe lost his father, an officer serving in Trieste, to the Spanish. He was thus left without a father figure of reference, which was remedied by his grandfather Beppe – the Dinghy man – an enlightened entrepreneur who founded the Lloyd Italico insurance company in 1910, later to become Ancora in 1930, one of Italy’s most prominent insurance groups.

In parallel with his passion for the sea, which, we wrote earlier, was not yet fully settled, Beppe Croce meanwhile acquired those character traits in which there are two fundamental pillars such as a sense of duty and a spirit of service. During that time he played several sports, grew up, began working in the family business, and fulfilled his duty during World War II and after the armistice in 1943, fought the Germans, as a liberal partisan, loyal to the king, according to family traditions.

The Italian Yacht Club, its home

His ‘sporting’ commitment also starts early within what is the hallowed temple of sailing in Italy, the Italian Yacht Club (founded in 1879) of which he became General Secretary on Oct. 13, 1939, Vice President from Jan. 12, 1943 until what became a full-fledged regency from November 1958 to September 1986, the day of his passing.

To get a measure of the YCI’s role in its life, in 1944 following the near-destruction by a bombing of the headquarters at Porticciolo Duca degli Abruzzi, the Club was transferred in its entirety to Beppe Croce’s house at 5 Via Assarotti, ‘kindly made available,’ we still read in the yearbooks of the Yacht Club which, it is worth remembering, had been invested with the new task of ‘Italian Sailing Federation’ since 1927 at the behest of CONI and the National Fascist Party.

Beppe Croce, sailing’s greatest politician

The careers of the busy man, the professional, and the sportsman take on a new speed in the immediate postwar period. Beppe Croce in 1950 succeeded his grandfather in leading the group. Although he had no natural transport or special inclination for that world, he could not, however, shirk the task of keeping alive the company that his grandfather had founded and successfully run: it was a matter of style; the man of style cannot escape certain duties, even if they are not so welcome. Beppe therefore devoted much of his life to the business of insurance.

Again abusing the railroad metaphor, if the professional track ran straight and without any particular jolt, his sailing career, however, began to take a different and, perhaps, very exciting turn for someone with such a strong political attitude and vision. It was really in 1952 that several things began to move. Beppe Croce was then Secretary General of the YCI, and in January of that year, on a trip to Paris that went down in history, together with René Levainville and Franco Gavagnin, they initiated the first offshore regatta in the Mediterranean, the well-known Giraglia, which was created precisely to sportingly unite two neighboring countries whose relations had been frayed by the previous world conflict. At the end of that year also came the first international nomination: Beppe Croce, then 42, became the Mediterranean representative on the I.Y.R.U. Standing Committee. (International Yacht Racing Union) which is the world sailing federation, founded in London in 1907 and which later became I.S.A.F. and then World Sailing.

In 1955 Italy became a permanent member of the IYRU with its own seat, with that position entrusted precisely to Beppe Croce who, almost simultaneously, was also elected a member of the international jury at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. His career as a sports executive is decidedly meteoric. If he began to be known and appreciated in that Anglo-Saxon-driven world, in Italy he assumed the Vice-Presidency of the Italian Sailing Federation in 1953 to assume the role of President from 1957 to 1981, almost 35 years in office!

As Piero Ottone well summed up in his long memoir that closes Mondadori’s volume dedicated to Beppe Croce ‘A Sail on the Course of a Life’: “He was judged by some to be an old-fashioned president, favoring elite sailing, the kind that used to be done in the old days, and which he called “with white flannels.” But the criticism was due to a misunderstanding.

It is true: Croce was an old-fashioned sportsman, a true amateur, a yachtsman rather than a yachtsman; an organizer, just to make a point, who did not ask for reimbursement of expenses for his service trips, even if he went to Hong Kong or San Francisco. But he made a decisive contribution to the popularity of sailing in Italy. IVF membership has increased from three thousand at the beginning to over forty thousand; sailing schools, from half a dozen to two hundred and fifty.

And then there is the organization of countless events. The most important event, to which he linked his name, was the 1960 Olympics in Naples: Croce was president of the Olympic Committee, and Carlo Rolandi, his successor as president of the IVF, said that those regattas “marked the subsequent Olympics for many years, for the choice of the courses, for the imagination of many organizational details, for the lesson and friendliness of an Olympics still on a human level“.

But the role that takes him to the top of the world yachting heap, and here again Croce sets two other records: first non-Anglo-Saxon and as longest-serving president, is precisely the presidency of the IYRU itself, from 1969 to 1986. In short, a lifetime of handling the threads of sailing with aplomb, class and determination. Even today, since 1989, the World Federation has awarded the Beppe Croce Trophy to the person who has made the most significant voluntary contribution to the sport of sailing.

Italy in the America’s Cup? Credit to Beppe Croce

It was again Beppe Croce who facilitated Italy’s entry into the America’s Cup by going with Gianni Agnelli to Newport in 1962 in an effort to credit our country among the challengers for the world’s oldest trophy. They returned with some vague promises and a rather long goodbye. But from that trip we are left with legendary snapshots of Beppe Croce, Gianni and Marella Agnella and the Kennedys during the Cup races in Newport. He was also involved in Azzurra affairs, although his role as president of the World Federation in 1983 saw him more as a mediator in the dispute between his friends at the New York Yacht Club and the Australians with the incriminating fins.

Things then went well for the Italians, in their first appearance on the America’s Cup scene; well for the Australians, who took it away. Croce was full of admiration for the victors, who had been able to innovate, while the Americans had made the mistake of believing that the Twelve Meters were no longer amenable to improvement. But he was sorry to bid farewell to Newport.

“Newport was electric, the atmosphere extraordinary, the tension exasperating,” he later wrote, ” For a lover of competitive sailing, as I am, whether one or the other won comes later; the first strong impression that of a magnificent, fair, anthology-like duel. Thus, the admission: “I loved Newport, its world, its tradition, its legend, the Cup environment. I’m afraid that as we begin to tour the world, the Cup will lose some of its appeal“.
Who knows what he would think of the Cup now-but that is not for us to know.

Talented sailor and family man

To the great profile of the professional, a brilliant sporting career acted as a natural counterpart: he won many times; the first, in 1939, in the Italian University Championship, in a Star, which by 1933 had also arrived in Italy; the last, in 1969, when he became Italian champion in the 5.50 SI, on Lake Garda. He did not disdain the high seas and, needless almost to say, participated in his Giraglia 11 times, winning it on two occasions aboard Miranda and Pazienza. Always on board with him were his closest collaborator friends who had an almost veneration for him. These include Luigi Lagorio Serra and Chicco Gambaro.

The second track of his life was his family, to which he named all his boats, as well as his children later on. In 1940 he had married a woman of uncommon qualities, Umberta Raggio, who came from a family of great Genoese businessmen and shipowners: the Raggio family of Castello di Cornigliano.

Three children were born of the marriage, Manuela, Gigi, and Carlo; Manuela married Carlo Bonomi, with whom Beppe had established a relationship, in addition to kinship, of friendship, to the point of participating, he a high priest of sailing, in regattas on offshore powerboats: “Sailing is love. Offshore racing aboard a Cigarette revealed to me the ideal lover.”, he later recounted, confirming once again how sharp and often capable of great irony he was.

A life to the fullest

Croce’s life was full, eventful, fun and challenging to the last day, always pleasant, avid reader, spent much of his – little – free time on books. Among the most beautiful concluding words we are once again helped by Piero Ottone when he writes:

“Even in his later years he was always in the midst of some battle, but he saw the world with the maturity and detachment of a wise man. Of the past he remembered the good times: “Perhaps it is true,” he said, “that the true paradises are the lost paradises, and it is also true that, in memory, the distant memories always seem to us the most beautiful, because we forget the labors, hardships, dangers, and only the joy of success comes to kindle the small, often asleep memorizer that always dwells in the human heart“.

He also said, “I am an old lover, and senile loves are often the most tenacious, because they perhaps constitute a revival; they are the search for lost time. What more is there to say? Great loves are dumb (To those who asked him what his sorrows, his bitternesses, had been, he replied, ‘Time serves to erase them…’).”

The final words are written in the YCI yearbook, which in a few, but heartfelt lines greets its president this way.

“1986-September 16: Beppe Croce, Meritorious Member of the Club he had chaired since 1963,dies in Genoa. He was president, since 1969, of the International Yacht Racing Union and, from 1957 to 1981, president of the Italian Sailing Federation. He leaves behind immense regret among the Members of the Italian Yacht Club and countless Friends from Italy and throughout the sailing world.”
He does not make time to follow the adventures of the 12 Metre Italia participating in the America’s Cup challenge in his Club’s colors, he does not make time to follow the whole evolution of his world from there on. Who knows what he would have thought of that.

Luigi Magliari Galante