Adolfo Consolini: A “Pirelli Giant” at the Olympics
November 1948: when Pirelli magazine carried a portrait of him under the title “Style and Power”, Adolfo Consolini had been an employee of A.G.A. (Articoli Gomma e Affini, a Pirelli Group subsidiary) for almost a year. As an official “producer”, he used to go around Milan on his scooter offering shopkeepers various rubber items such as car mats, household items, and toys. At five in the afternoon he would invariably be at the Pirelli sports field in Viale Sarca, right in front of the Bicocca factory, for his customary training session. Because this rubber-goods salesman had for some months also been an Olympic gold medallist as a discus thrower: in London 1948, where he took top spot with 52.78 metres. The thirty-year-old from Verona – standing 183 cm tall and weighing in at 99 kilos – also held the world record for that year, with 55.33 metres.
In other words, Pirelli’s A.G.A. had a true champion in its midst. Pirelli magazine returned to Consolini in 1950, with a fine article entitled “Athletes to Illustrate Gulliver” by Corrado Pizzinelli. With the athlete, who in the meantime had won yet another gold, at the European Championships in Brussels, was his colleague Teseo Taddia, who had also been working at A.G.A. for some time. And he too was a champion: throwing the hammer 54.73 metres and winning silver in Brussels. These champions were “two giants who look as though they’re straight out of an illustration for Gulliver’s trip to Brobdingnag”, according to the journalist Pizzinelli, “but who have no custom-built cars, nor villas, nor even any industries. Two archangels of sport, candid, starry-eyed, pure, simple, and poor”. Consolini tells of how he was about to indulge in a few days’ holiday by the sea, to enjoy his world record, when along comes the American Fortune Everett Gordien and snatches his record from him: “How can one stay calm? Me, you know, there’s no way! I tore up the note and went off to train…”
Consolini went on to three more Olympic Games, winning silver in Helsinki 1952. Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960 were to be where one of the greatest and best-loved Italian athletes would bow out, with great honour. Meanwhile, he had married the Slovenian Hanny Cuk in 1951 and their son Sergio was born in 1956. The Pirelli house organ Fatti e Notizie devoted a page to his wedding with Hanny, with “best wishes from all Pirelliani to Adolfo Consolini and his esteemed spouse”. Consolini was an expert in rubber products – in addition to the wood and metal of his discus, of course – but he also learnt to handle horseshoes: in 1953 he played the part of the farrier Maciste in the film Cronache di poveri amanti, which the filmmaker Carlo Lizzani based on the novel by Vasco Pratolini. Legend has it that, turning a quarrel scene, he acted with such realism that he really did knock out the great Marcello Mastroianni.
Consolini died on 20 December 1969 at the age of fifty-two. For some time he had been the manager of the Finished Products Warehouse at Milano Bicocca, overseeing a dozen workers. “You could hardly say he was a traditional boss,” recalls a worker, Alfredo, in Fatti e Notizie. “We had such a level of collaboration with him that he’d even be helping us load and unload the goods”. From our archive, another story of sport, another story of factory work.
November 1948: when Pirelli magazine carried a portrait of him under the title “Style and Power”, Adolfo Consolini had been an employee of A.G.A. (Articoli Gomma e Affini, a Pirelli Group subsidiary) for almost a year. As an official “producer”, he used to go around Milan on his scooter offering shopkeepers various rubber items such as car mats, household items, and toys. At five in the afternoon he would invariably be at the Pirelli sports field in Viale Sarca, right in front of the Bicocca factory, for his customary training session. Because this rubber-goods salesman had for some months also been an Olympic gold medallist as a discus thrower: in London 1948, where he took top spot with 52.78 metres. The thirty-year-old from Verona – standing 183 cm tall and weighing in at 99 kilos – also held the world record for that year, with 55.33 metres.
In other words, Pirelli’s A.G.A. had a true champion in its midst. Pirelli magazine returned to Consolini in 1950, with a fine article entitled “Athletes to Illustrate Gulliver” by Corrado Pizzinelli. With the athlete, who in the meantime had won yet another gold, at the European Championships in Brussels, was his colleague Teseo Taddia, who had also been working at A.G.A. for some time. And he too was a champion: throwing the hammer 54.73 metres and winning silver in Brussels. These champions were “two giants who look as though they’re straight out of an illustration for Gulliver’s trip to Brobdingnag”, according to the journalist Pizzinelli, “but who have no custom-built cars, nor villas, nor even any industries. Two archangels of sport, candid, starry-eyed, pure, simple, and poor”. Consolini tells of how he was about to indulge in a few days’ holiday by the sea, to enjoy his world record, when along comes the American Fortune Everett Gordien and snatches his record from him: “How can one stay calm? Me, you know, there’s no way! I tore up the note and went off to train…”
Consolini went on to three more Olympic Games, winning silver in Helsinki 1952. Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960 were to be where one of the greatest and best-loved Italian athletes would bow out, with great honour. Meanwhile, he had married the Slovenian Hanny Cuk in 1951 and their son Sergio was born in 1956. The Pirelli house organ Fatti e Notizie devoted a page to his wedding with Hanny, with “best wishes from all Pirelliani to Adolfo Consolini and his esteemed spouse”. Consolini was an expert in rubber products – in addition to the wood and metal of his discus, of course – but he also learnt to handle horseshoes: in 1953 he played the part of the farrier Maciste in the film Cronache di poveri amanti, which the filmmaker Carlo Lizzani based on the novel by Vasco Pratolini. Legend has it that, turning a quarrel scene, he acted with such realism that he really did knock out the great Marcello Mastroianni.
Consolini died on 20 December 1969 at the age of fifty-two. For some time he had been the manager of the Finished Products Warehouse at Milano Bicocca, overseeing a dozen workers. “You could hardly say he was a traditional boss,” recalls a worker, Alfredo, in Fatti e Notizie. “We had such a level of collaboration with him that he’d even be helping us load and unload the goods”. From our archive, another story of sport, another story of factory work.
