Mario Zanin (cyclist)

Mario Zanin medal table
Cyclist
Italy
Olympic games
gold	1964 Tokyo	Single road race

Mario Zanin (born  July 3, 1940 in Sarano di Santa Lucia , Treviso ) is a former Italian cyclist .

As a 22-year-old, he made his debut in the 1962 Tour de l'Avenir in the Squadra Azzurra and was able to finish second and third in each stage. The most important success was the victory at the Gran Premio Belvedere in 1963 and the Italian road championship in 1964. After a respectable 10th place in the road world championship for amateurs , he was Olympic champion in the individual road race at the Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo in 1964 . His winning time over the distance of 195 kilometers in pouring rain was four hours, 39 minutes, 51 seconds and 63 hundredths. In one of the tightest decisions in Olympic cycling history, he was only two hundredths of a second ahead of second-placed Dane Kjell Rodian and eleven hundredths of a second ahead of Belgian Walter Godefroot as bronze medalist.

In the year after his Olympic victory, he switched to the professional field, where he drove for the sports groups Maino, Mainetti and Max Meyer and a year without a contract. In 1966 he won the 11th stage of the Vuelta a España as a guest driver for the Swiss team Queen Anne . Two years later he ended his active career as a 28-year-old after having contested the Giro d'Italia for the third time with the Kelvinator team. As a professional driver, he could only achieve one victory.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Luciano Boccaccini, Giovanni Tarello: Annuario Storico Del Ciclismo Italiano . Publialfa Edizion, Milan 1994, p. 389 (Italian).

Web links

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