Guido Messina

Guido Messina

Guido Messina (1955)
To person
Date of birth	January 4, 1931 in Monreale
date of death	January 10, 2020 in Caselette
nation	Italy
Most important successes
UCI Track World Championships World Champion Single Pursuit (1948) World Champion Single Pursuit (1953) World Champion Singles Pursuit (1954) World Champion Single Pursuit (1955) World Champion Single Pursuit (1956) Helsinki Olympic Games 1952 Olympic champion track foursome (1952)
Last updated: January 11, 2020

Guido Messina (born January 4, 1931 in Monreale ; † January 10, 2020 in Caselette ) was an Italian cyclist , Olympic champion and five-time world champion.

Athletic career

In 1948, at the age of 17, Guido Messina became world champion in the amateurs single pursuit for the first time in Amsterdam . 1950 and 1951 he took third place; In 1953 he won the world title again. At the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 , Messina was part of the Italian four-man team that won the gold medal. In 1954 Messina turned pro and won the first of three Italian championship titles in the pursuit; In 1956 he also won the Omnium .

At the UCI Track World Championships in Cologne in 1954 , Guido Messina won the first of three world championship titles in the pros' single pursuit, beating the big favorite Hugo Koblet ; In 1957 he was third. In the following years Messina also drove road races , such as the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Sardinia , where he won the first stage of the Giro in Turin in 1955. He also started in seven six-day races , the best place was a second place in 1961 in Buenos Aires together with his compatriot Leandro Faggin . Messina was a professional driver from 1954 to 1962. During this time he won eight road races, mostly circuit races.

In 2009 Guido Messina handed over his Olympic track bike to the "Museo dei Campionissimi" in Novi Ligure .

Messina died on January 10, 2020 in his home in Caselette near Turin . At the time of his death, he was the oldest living bearer of the Maglia Rosa .

literature

• Beppe Conti: C'era una Volta la Pista. Guido Messina raconta , 2003

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Franco Brocca: Addio a Guido Messina, era la maglia rosa più anziana. In: gazzetta.it. January 10, 2020, accessed January 11, 2020 (Italian). 
2. ^ Gino Cervi, Paolo Facchinetti: 100 years of the Giro d'Italia . Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7654-4954-3 , p. 170 (Italian).
3. ↑ Luciano Boccaccini, Giovanni Tarello: Annuario Storico Del Ciclismo Italiano . Publialfa Edizion, Milan 1994, p. 246 (Italian).
4. ↑ L'olimpionico Guido Messina apre “Novi in ​​bici” 2009 accessed on January 11, 2020 (Italian)

Web links

Commons : Guido Messina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Guido Messina in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Guido Messina in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )