![]() Most watched the Games in bars and shop windows or on newsreels in cinemas. In 1948, much of Italy was still recovering from the war’s devastation the Marshall Plan to rebuild the country was in its teething phase and for many, the London Olympics offered a badly needed chance to cheer national athletes.įew people had televisions in their homes. “I started running again with the little that was left in me because naturally, after four years as a prisoner of war I was not in top physical form, but I must have had something left in me and I won the Italian (4 X 400) title and was chosen to go to the Olympics,” he said. Indeed, if it were not for the luxurious surroundings, the covers of fashion magazines and signed photographs on the walls, and the hovering Bangladeshi butler in his crisp, white jacket, Ottavio and Rosita could be mistaken for any elderly couple sharing a park bench. ” And, like most couples who have been together for a lifetime, Rosita finishes her husband’s thought: “He likes to poke fun (at the English), saying that he was a guest of His Majesty the King of Britain”. “It wasn’t exactly a Club Med type of environment ideal for training,” he said, laughing as he leaned back on a Missoni pillow. Ottavio, fighting on the Italian side in the Battle of El Alamein, was captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war for four years in Egypt. Missoni ran in the 1938 European Championships, and won the 1939 Italian Championships and World Student Games. That year in the 400 meters at a Milan event, he beat American Elroy Robinson, then the world record holder for the 880 yards. In 1937, at the tender age of 16, he was the youngest member of Italy’s national team. ![]() He had an extraordinary running style,” Rosita, now 81, recalled in their home as Ottavio, now 91, sat next to her on an iconic Missoni zebra-patterned couch.Īs a boy, Ottavio was a running wunderkind. He looked like he was 21 but I later found out that he was 27. “Our student seats were right near the changing rooms at Wembley Stadium. He was 27, a tall, strappingly handsome member of the Italian 400 meters hurdles team at the Games where the world was trying to put the devastation of war behind it. She was 16, going on 17, a shy Italian girl in London to improve her English. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchiīut none of it would have happened had it not been for the 1948 London Olympics, where one kind of flame sparked another between Rosita Jelmini and Ottavio Missoni. The two fell in love and later returned to Italy to found what was to become the Missoni fashion empire. ![]() Missoni ran in the 1948 Olympics in London, where he met Rosita, who was studying English there. Ottavio Missoni, 91, poses with his wife Rosita, 81, at their company headquarters in Sumirago, northern Italy April 24, 2012.
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