Renzo Morigi

Renzo Morigi medal table
Sport shooting
Italy
Olympic games
gold	Los Angeles 1932	Rapid fire pistol 25 m

Lorenzo "Renzo" Morigi (born February 28, 1895 in Ravenna , † April 13, 1962 in Bologna ) was an Italian fascist and marksman .

Life

Morigi had a high school diploma and was a trained agronomist . During the First World War , Morigi fought in the Italian army and in 1921 joined the National Fascist Party (PNF). Thanks to his friendship with Ettore Muti, also from Ravenna, he soon made a career in the PNF . In 1928 he was appointed party secretary of the PNF in Ravenna. An office that he filled until 1933. In the fascist militia he rose to the rank of major.

Morigi, described by Arrigo Petacco as high-handed, quarrelsome and a gun fanatic, first gained fame in 1927 when he shot down the alleged assassin Ettore Mutis, the communist day laborer Leopoldo Missiroli, in Ravenna on September 13, 1927. Morigi was sitting in a hairdressing salon nearby and was shaving when he heard the two gunshots, hurried out into the street and set off in pursuit of the escaped assassin. After a few meters, the always armed Morigi drew his pistol and knocked Missiroli down with a well-aimed shot. For this act he was later awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery .

According to the Carabinieri police reports , Morigi liked to drink and when he was drunk there were frequent occurrences of walking in the street, drawing his pistol and shooting at the streetlights, where no one dared to stop him.

Olympic games

Allegedly he became a participant in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles by chance after reading an advertisement about the upcoming qualifying competitions in a newspaper that had been abandoned while on a train ride. According to other sources, he took part because a party friend had campaigned for him at the national Olympic committee .

At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles , he competed with the rapid fire pistol at 25 m. Together with eleven other competitors, he initially achieved the maximum number of points of 18 hits, so that there were several jump-offs afterwards. Morigi survived three of these rounds without a miss before only Heinz Hax , Domenico Matteucci and he fought for the medals. In the fourth round of the jump-off, Morigi hit all targets again, while Hax missed two and Matteucci only got three hits. Morigi thus became Olympic champion . This made him the first Italian gold medalist at the Olympic Games in sport shooting and it would be 64 years before Roberto Di Donna won the next gold medal in sport shooting for Italy in 1996. In the USA he was nicknamed gun-man for his outstanding performance at the games , which was translated into human submachine gun ( Italian mitragliatrice umana ) on his return to Italy .

From 1934 to 1943 Morigi was a member of the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian Parliament for the fascist party . From 1935 to 1937 he was also a member of the Gran Consiglio del Fascismo and was for a time deputy to the party secretary Achille Starace .

After 1945 he withdrew from public life. Morigi died in Bologna in 1962.

Web links

• Renzo Morigi in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Renzo Morigi at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (Italian, with picture)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Lorenzo Morigi. In: storia.camera.it. Retrieved October 8, 2019 (Italian). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Renzo Morigi [1895–1962]. In: sportolimpico.it. Retrieved October 8, 2019 (Italian).