Giovanni Gozzi

Giovanni Gozzi 1932

Giovanni Gozzi (born October 19, 1902 in Milan , † August 11, 1976 in Arma di Taggia ) was an Italian wrestler and Olympic champion .

Career

Giovanni Gozzi started wrestling at an early age in Milan . He quickly developed into a class wrestler and already represented Italy at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris in the bantamweight in Greco-Roman style, the style he exclusively wrestled. 25 bantamweight wrestlers started in the Olympic tournament. Giovanni won only one fight and then lost to the experienced Finns Anselm Ahlfors and Väinö Ikonen , who won the silver and bronze medals in the final accounts, and came in 14th place.

Just a year later you saw another Giovanni at the European Championships in Milan , who fought great and became vice European champion. He did even better at the European Championships in Budapest in 1927 . There he became European bantamweight champion with five clear victories. Among those he defeated was the 1924 Olympic champion Eduard Pütsep from Estonia .

In 1928 Giovanni drove hopefully to the Olympic Games in Amsterdam . There he got five wins again, but after a defeat against Jindřich Maudr from Czechoslovakia he had to retire without still having the opportunity to fight against Kurt Leucht from Germany for the Olympic victory . But at least he won the bronze medal.

At the European Championships in Dortmund in 1929 Giovanni initially achieved two wins, but after a defeat in the 3rd round against Ödön Zombori from Hungary he had to retire and took 4th place.

Giovanni did his next start at an international championship again at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles . He started in featherweight and became Olympic champion . However, luck and a half-baked regulation stood by his side, because he only had to fight three fights because of two byes in the 2nd and 5th round, of which he also lost one against Wolfgang Ehrl from Germany on points. Wolfgang Ehrl, on the other hand, had to contest five fights, all of which he won on points, but was burdened with a missing point with every point win. Thus Ehrl had 5 missing points after five laps. With two shoulder wins, two byes and one defeat against Ehrl, Gozzi only had three missing points and was suddenly Olympic champion after the 5th round because Ehrl was eliminated with five missing points. Why, however, Gozzi got two byes, none of the wrestling officials could explain.

In 1934, at the end of his career at the European Featherweight Championships in Rome , Giovanni Gozzi once again won a bronze medal. With a point victory over Wolfgang Ehrl, he also managed to take revenge for the defeat in Los Angeles. Then Giovanni Gozzi ended his active wrestling career. He died honored and respected in 1976 in Milan.

The fights he competed in international championships can be read in the following section.

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, EM = European Championship, all competitions in the Greco-Roman style, bantamweight, then up to 56/58 kg, featherweight up to 61/62 kg body weight)

year	space	competition	Weight class
1924	14th	OS in Paris	Bantam	with a win over Anton Koolman, Estonia and defeats against Väinö Ikonen , Finland and Anselm Ahlfors , Finland
1925	2.	EM in Milan	Bantam	with wins against Carlo Ponti, Italy and Paul Reiber , Germany and one loss against Armand Magyar , Hungary
1927	1.	EM in Budapest	Bantam	with victories over Fridjes Hoffmann, Yugoslavia , Moczko, Poland , Armand Magyar, Eduard Pütsep , Estonia and Svend Martinsen , Norway
1928	bronze	OS in Amsterdam	Bantam	with victories over A. Aria, France , Oskar Lindelöw, Sweden , Piet Mollin, Belgium , Ödön Zombori , Hungary and Anselm Ahlfors and one defeat against Jindřich Maudr , Czechoslovakia
1929	4th	EM in Dortmund	Bantam	with victories over Paul Reiber and Oskar Lindelöw and one defeat against Ödön Zombori
1932	gold	OS in Los Angeles	feather	with victories over Kiyoshi Kase, Japan and Ödön Zombori and despite a defeat against Wolfgang Ehrl , Germany
1934	3.	EM in Rome	feather	with victories over Göte Persson, Sweden, Schärer, Switzerland and Wolfgang Ehrl, Germany and one defeat against Kustaa Pihlajamäki , Finland

Italian championships

Giovanni Gozzi was a total of eight times Italian bantam or featherweight champion, each in the Greco-Roman style.

literature

• Documentation of FILA's International Wrestling Championships, 1976
• various issues of the specialist magazine "Athletik" from 1929 to 1934

Web links

• Giovanni Gozzi in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Short biography of Giovanni Gozzi with illustration