Nino Welcome, Istrian exile and legend of Italian boxing, Olympic and world champion, died recently at the age of 87.

Born in Isola d'Istria on April 26, 1938, he lived through the spring of 1945 during the occupation of the army of communist Yugoslavia, which brought mourning and persecution to the Italians in the context of Tito's annexationist project. His brother was arrested by the OZNA, the Yugoslavian secret police, suffered a harsh detention but fortunately returned home, unlike thousands of Julian, Fiume and Dalmatian people of whom nothing more was heard. His family fled to Trieste, where the young Nino began his boxing career and would later also be elected city councilor for the MSI for a short period.

Giovanni, known as Nino, Benvenuti was the Olympic welterweight champion in 1960 in Rome, world super welterweight champion (1965-66) and middleweight (1967-70), as well as European champion middleweight (1965-67). In 1968 he won the prestigious Fighter of the Year award, the only Italian to do so. He was also the only Italian boxer to hold world titles in two categories (middleweight and superwelterweight), a feat shared with only nine other athletes at world level. In 1992 he entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame, the first Italian to receive this honor, and was admitted to the National Italian-American Sport Hall of Fame for his successes in the USA. When he returned to Trieste after winning the world title in the New York ring, it was April 17, 1967 and that night millions of Italians listened to the voice of Paul Valenti tremble for his victory over Emile Griffith.

He told his story in many interviews, but above all in the book “L'Isola che non c'è. Il mio esodo dall'Istria” (Eraclea, Rome 2013), written together with the journalist Mauro Grimaldi, who then collaborated with the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmazia and the publishing house Ferrogallico in the creation of the comic “Nino Benvenuti. My Exodus from Istria” who told his story of suffering, rebirth and success in a format aimed above all at the new generations.

Proud of his origins, Benvenuti was the testimonial of the Corsa del Ricordo, a “Panchina azzurra” in the Giuliano-Dalmata district of Rome already celebrates his sporting skills as an exile who has always maintained a deep bond with Istria, receiving in 2018 the award from the Self-managed Community of the Italian Nationality of his hometown Island of Istria: in one of his last interviews he said that he would have liked his ashes to be scattered in the Adriatic Sea from “soscojo”, the rock in Isola where he learned to swim as a child, when the time came.

We remember him with the documentary Nino Benvenuti: From Isola d'Istria to the rings of the whole world, produced by Tele Capodistria in 2023:

https://365.rtvslo.si/arhiv/i-documentari-di-tv-capodistria/175004560