Thinking Italian..... Time to remember the legendary d'Inzeo brothers as action begins at Piazza di Siena

As the Piazza di Siena in Rome prepares for the second leg of the 2008 Samsung Super League with FEI series this week, thoughts turn to things Italian and to the great sporting achievements of some of that country's top riders. For many years Italy was THE force to be reckoned with in the world of international show jumping, and two men in particular helped secure that lofty status.

Writing in 1966, the late Pamela McGregor-Morris put it into perspective. "The Italians have virtually dominated the show jumping scene in Europe since shortly after the last war [World War II]. The Germans have a better Olympic record but Italy, very largely due to the immense superiority of the d'Inzeo brothers, Piero and Raimondo, have won countless Nations Cups and even more individual championships. It has always been something of a problem to find a third and a fourth rider even approaching the same calibre for a cup team, but the d'Inzeos between them have usually been able to carry a lot of dead weight and still pull out on top". Fulsome praise indeed from the formidable lady who was long-standing equestrian correspondent for The London Times.

However, Pam could not have foreseen how much more the two cavalrymen would achieve before the end of their spectacular careers. They would make Olympic history when competing together in eight consecutive Olympic Games between 1948 and 1976, each winning six Olympic medals. Raimondo won one gold, two silver and three bronze, while Piero won four bronze and two silver medals - quite a family collection. And Raimondo also won the World Championship twice - first with Merano at Aachen in 1956, a year after securing silver medal position with the same horse, and again in Venice in 1960 with Gowran Girl, while in Buenos Aires six years later he would also take individual bronze with Bowjak. Not to be outdone, Piero was crowned European Champion in Paris in 1959 following a great performance with Uruguay, a year after securing individual silver in Aachen with The Rock who also took individual bronze in London in 1962. The D'Inzeo name is legend.....

Their success is all the more remarkable for the fact that they were born into a family of relatively modest means. Not for them the gloriously wealthy circumstances that allowed others search the horse-markets of the world for the best show jumpers. Their top horses Merano, Uruguay, Rahin, The Rock and his half-sister Rockette belonged to the Italian Federation while Pagoro, Brando and The Quiet Man were Italian Government property. Bells of Clonmel was owned by the Caribinieri and Turvey, Gowran Girl and others were loaned by riding academies and private individuals. However, such was their reputation as horsemen that they were given authority to travel abroad to buy horses in France, Germany and Ireland. But they often had to suffer the deep frustration of handing them over to someone else to compete after spending endless months and years of choosing, schooling, honing the horse's skills and riding them to victory. It was the way of the day. Throughout it all, however, their expertise, gleaned from the many hours spent with their father Costanzo DInzeo, was widely acknowledged.

Constanzo was a former sergeant-major in the Italian army who became manager of the smart sporting club Circolo San Girogio founded by the Marchese Patrizi on the Via Cassia, a few kilometres outside the northern gates of Rome. When the club closed, Constanzo turned it into a livery yard where he boarded and schooled horses and trained riders until his untimely death in a motor accident in 1957. He taught his boys to ride in the style devised by Captain Federio Caprilli which revolutionised the art of jumping horses, and although they never became Caprilli purists, Raimondo and Piero were true stylists. As Lida Fleitman Bloodgood wrote in 1969, "their performances are always calm and smooth, their horses flying the jumps with the grace and speed of swallows, for both men are past masters in judging pace and in cutting corners to save time. From the moment they pass the starting post until they finish the course there is little or no variation in the "way of going", and no pulling and hauling of a horse to his hocks before the take-off. They are among the very few whose horses move like hunters rather than show-jumpers - those few including some of the French, many of the English and all of the Irish". Although the sport has changed a great deal in the intervening period, those words still describe much of what is best in the art of show jumping......

Many of the horses that passed through their hands had an interesting story to tell. Both brothers rode the tail-swishing grey Brando but didn't particularly like him, so it was with Col Cartasegna that the horse, who spent the years immediately following WWII giving rides to children in the Piazza di Siena, won the famous King George V Cup at the White City in London. Merano, by a stallion son of the 1935 Derby winner Ortello out of an Irish hunter mare Dalila, was bred by Guiseppe Morese at Pontecagana near Salerno and was sold to Raimondo for just £200 because Morese wanted to see his horse ridden by a great rider. Raimondo eventually sold the horse on to Sandrino Perrone, a sportsman and editor of Italy's leading national daily newspaper for £4,000, but Merano was sold on again to the Italian Federation when things didn't work out and Raimondo found himself back in the saddle once more.

Like Brando, The Quiet Man came from a less than flattering background, starting his career by pulling a plough in County Sligo. His life became a little more glamorous when he "starred" in the John Wayne film after which he was named when shooting took place in the west of Ireland in 1951, but he suffered a severe injury in the course of filming and was out of work for a full year afterwards. Bought for £110, he was re-trained as a jumper and entered into the Dublin Spring Show in April 1954 where he was spotted by Italian dealers, the D'Angelo brothers, and bought for the Italian team for £1,000. The following year he returned to Dublin Horse Show where Raimondo rode him to victory in the Nations Cup, and where he also scored a win, two second placings and cleared 6ft 4ins in a High-Jump event. From relatively humble beginnings, The Quiet Man rose to great heights.

But of the D'Inzeo horses probably the best-loved and most-recalled will be The Rock. Together with Piero he won his way into the hearts of the Italian people who loved this partnership dearly.

The final tribute to Italian show jumping is left to Irish army star Col. F.A Ahern who, in a foreword to a book by Pamela McGregor-Morris, wrote the following about the Italian Army Team's visit to The White City in 1955.

"The beauty of their performances....should serve as an incentive to all riders to emulate them. They achieved this perfection by adhering to correct principles and were able to apply any of the accepted methods of achieving precision in such a way as to make their application of the aids almost imperceptible. Their approach to the jump was always calm, unruffled and brilliantly alert, and the manner in which they went with their horses was a joy to watch. I know of no other method which contributes to a performance; on the contrary I think that departures from this standard detract enormously from the beauty of the spectacle of a well-trained horse and an accomplished rider galloping smoothly on and sailing over a course of jumps".

The Italian riders competing in this Friday's Samsung Super League with FEI competition are following in glorious footsteps, and as they ride into the ring at the Piazza di Siena, they should hold up their heads with pride...

PHOTO: Piero and Raimondo D'Inzeo