On the momentous Milanese night that Marcello Fiasconaro lined up for the 800m in the Italy vs Czechoslovakia match at the Arena Civica 50 years ago – on 27 June 1973 – his main concern was to get the better of Josef Plachy.

The Czech runner had won the European indoor title in Grenoble the previous year and finished fifth in the Olympic 800m final in Mexico City in 1968. In the latter race, the victorious Australian Ralph Doubell matched the world record figures set in 1962 by the Kiwi giant of the middle distances, Peter Snell: 1:44.3.

Sub-1:44

Plachy was renowned for his finishing kick. Fiasconaro’s coach, Stewart Banner, instructed his charge to go out fast and keep his foot on the gas. The aim was to drop the Czech favourite before the final 150m.

In the monochrome Rai Sport footage available from half a century ago, against the dark backdrop of the Milanese night, the floodlights pick out Plachy as a somewhat ghostly figure in his all-white uniform.

He’s right on Fiasconaro’s heels as the South African-Italian leads through the bell in 51.2 and sticks doggedly within striking range through 600m (1:16.5). It’s then that the relentless pace finally starts to hit. Plachy drops 5m behind and then fades increasingly adrift from 150m out.

Fiasconaro cuts a distinctive figure as he pulls clear: 6ft 3in tall and powerfully built, his arms pumping piston-fashion, his long dark hair flowing in the breeze. He crosses the line in 1:43.7, Plachy in 1:45.7.

After 11 years, Snell’s world record – also equalled by Dave Wottle at the 1972 US Olympic Trials – had not just been broken, but emphatically obliterated. The 1:44 barrier had been smashed to smithereens by a world-beater who had come from nowhere. Or relatively so.

Rugby’s loss was athletics’ gain

As Fiasconaro himself admitted: “It was a complete accident that I got into athletics.” It was by another ‘accident’, his father having been born in Italy, that he was able to escape the sporting ban imposed on his homeland, with its racist apartheid system, and compete internationally.

Fiasconaro was one month shy of his 24th birthday when he got the better of Plachy and broke the 800m world record in Milan. Five years before that, when Placy was running in the Olympic final in Mexico, Fiasconaro was a burgeoning young rugby union player in his native South Africa.

He played as a centre in a Western Province U20 team that included Morne du Plessis, who went on to become a long-time captain of the South African national side, the Springboks. Du Plessis also co-founded the Sports Science Institute of South Africa with the renowned distance running physiologist Tim Noakes.

Fiasconaro was a 20-year-old playing for the celebrated Villagers Rugby Club in Cape Town when they started sharing a new sports complex with the Celtic Harriers Running Club. Banner was the chief coach at the running club. He suggested that the rugby players should run track in the off-season to keep in shape.

Fiasconaro’s talent for running became immediately apparent. He entered a 100m race “for a lark” and won in 11 seconds flat. Then he ran 23.6 for 200m.

Five months later, he tackled his first 400m, clocking 48.5. In his second 400m race, at Stellenbosch University’s Coetzenburg track, he beat South Africa’s leading 400m runners, Donald Timm and Danie Malan, in 46.6. In June 1973, three days before Fiasconaro’s 800m world record in Milan, Malan set a 1000m world record of 2:16.00 in Munich.

When Fiasconaro won a 400m race in Potchefstroom, his name attracted the attention of Italian discus thrower Carmelo Rado. He learned of Fiasconaro’s Italian background and alerted the Italian athletics authorities.

The Springbok-Italian

Marcello Luigi Fiasconaro – ‘March’ to his acquaintances – was born in Cape Town on 19 July 1949. His father, Gregorio, was an Italian opera singer, from Castelbuono, Sicily.

Serving as an Italian air force pilot in the Second World War, Gregorio was shot down over North Africa and transported to South Africa as a prisoner of war. He took three bullets in his back, one of which remained there for the rest of his life.

He remained in South Africa after the war, initially because he needed a hernia operation. He married a South African, Mabel Marie, from Pietermaritzburg and the couple settled in Cape Town. Gregorio became the director of music at Cape Town University.

When the Italian authorities became aware of this background, they flew Marcello to his father’s homeland. He won the 400m at the national championships in 45.7, breaking the Italian record by 0.4. He then acquired an Italian passport and started living in Italy for six months each year, learning the language from his training partners and teammates.

European outdoor gold and silver, and a world indoor 400m best

Running for the track and field Azzuri at the 1971 European Championships in Helsinki, Fiasconaro came tantalisingly close to gold. The British teenager David Jenkins hared off at a blistering pace in the outside lane, storming through 100m in 10.9, 200m in 21.1 and 300m in 32.4.

From 80m out all the way to the line, the Briton’s 5m lead was gradually whittled down by the two men directly inside him: defending champion Jan Werner of Poland, in lane seven, and Fiasconaro, in six.

In a grandstand finish, Fiasconaro lunged desperately at the tape and Jenkins, suspecting he had blown it, waved the press photographers towards the Springbok-Italian, until the result flashed up on the scoreboard.

Jenkins had held on by 0.04, prevailing in a championship record of 45.45. Fiasconaro took silver in 45.49, which stood as an Italian record for 10 years. Werner was third in 45.57.

Fiasconaro gained further compensation in the 4x400m final, getting the better of Jenkins on the anchor leg to take the Italian quartet to bronze behind West Germany and Poland.

Early in 1972, Fiasconaro set a world indoor 400m record of 46.1 in Genoa but he didn’t make it to the Munich Olympics that year. He was sidelined by a stress fracture in his left foot.

Banner was already steering him towards the 800m, fearing his charge did not have sufficient basic speed to challenge the world’s best quarter-milers. In 1973 Fiasconaro broke the Italian record at the longer distance four times before he lined up alongside Plachy in Milan.

His performance that night proved to be the pinnacle of his fleeting life in the international fast lane. “I ran the first lap in 51 seconds and in those days it was unheard of to run an opening lap that fast,” Fiasconaro recalled in an interview with Michelle Pieters in the South African magazine Modern Athlete. “I was hoping Josef would be metres behind me, but as I turned my head he was right behind me!

“I just couldn’t get rid of him and started worrying about his final kick. But when you watch on the video you can see how he just suddenly tails off and I keep my pace.”

“A quick career in athletics”

Returning to South Africa for “10 days of non-stop partying” took an inevitable toll. Overloading his training in a bid to regain shape, Fiasconaro suffered another stress facture.

Despite being hampered by achilles problems, he made a bold attempt to win the European 800m title in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico in 1974.

As Mel Watman wrote in his Athletics Weekly report: “Fiasconaro is such a cult figure in Italy, akin to George Best in his halcyon football days in Britain, that one trembled for him, knowing that the Italian fans would expect him as world record-holder to deliver the goods regardless of his only being 90% fit following injury.

“The fans, many of whose ancestors one could visualise lapping up the gladiatorial combat at the Colossseum, demanded something spectacular – and Fiasco gave it to them. He ran the race the only way he could, given the circumstances – a do or die effort from the front.”

Whizzing through the first 200m in 24.5, Fiasconaro was 8m clear of the field as he passed halfway in a stunning 50.1. He was still 4m clear at 600m but the wheels came off thereafter.

The Yugoslav Luciano Susanj unleashed a devastating kick to claim a decisive victory in 1:44.1, a championship record. The 18-year-old Briton Steve Ovett took second in 1:45.8 and the spent Fiasconaro faded to sixth in 1:46.3.

The following year, as he turned 26, the world 800m record-holder announced his retirement. He took a year off, then played rugby in Italy for two years for CUS Milano.

“I had a quick career in athletics,” Fiasconaro reflected in an interview on Ballz Visual Radio in South Africa. “Basically, 1970-1974 were my good years.

“I used to run in the South African summer and the Italian summer and I also ran the US indoor season, so I never had a winter off. I had achilles tendinitis problems and stress fractures.”

Settling back in South Africa in Johannesburg, Fiasconaro worked for adidas and took up golf. Now 73, he has been afforded the highest honour that can be bestowed on an Italian citizen, the Cavaliere Ordine al Merito Della Repubblica Italiana.

It took one of the all-time greats to eclipse his 800m world record. It was broken in the 1976 Olympic final in Montreal, the Cuban thoroughbred Alberto Juantorena, El Caballo, claiming the first half of his famous Olympic double in 1:43.5.

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage

Marcello FIASCONARO

Marcello FIASCONARO