Nicola Pietrangeli hospitalized in Rome: in the hospital for him the news of the death of his son Giorgio after a long illness

The news comes from the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation. «He died in Rome at only 59 years of age due to an incurable evil Giorgio Pietrangelison of the legendary Italian tennis player Nicola Pietrangeli. Giorgio was one of the first Italian surf champions in the 1980s: he participated with the National team at the 1988 World Cup in PuertoRico and in the European Championships in Portugal the following year. In 1985 he participated in the European Championships in Forte dei Marmi, in 1989 he won the Italian Viareggio championship. Giorgio leaves his dad Nicola, his wife Carola, his daughter Nicola and the brothers Marco and Filippo. The President of the Italian Tennis Federation and Padel Angelo Binaghi and all the tennis movement They are affected with the family and all those who lived alongside him in this moment of immense pain ».

Nicola Pietrangeli, hospitalized at the Gemelli Polyclinic for investigations, he learned in the hospital of his son’s death. The 91 -year -old legend of Italian tennis was operated on a few months ago.

For Giorgio Pietrangeli also the memory of the Italian Ski Ski and Wakeboard Surfing Federation. «In silence, like the silence that precedes every large storm has gone. Italy loses a great surfer and sporting: eccentric, full of energy, a driver who made the history of Italian surfing. Giorgio Pietrangeli, a blue pioneer, passed away last night. Sports Italy owes a lot to him. Starting from the most famous spot of the peninsula, certainly the most crowded and desired, Banzai ».

The memory continues: «In the wave of Santa marinella Giorgio happened to us by chance in 1984 together with Massimo Navarro and Valerio Castellano. Shared waves, they had only recently discovered surfing, but already made a reason for life. “It was flat, we returned from Ansedonia, we found it by chance,” he said in an interview in 2009 for the book Surf history in Italy. “In Valerio he rushed to go to the bathroom, we slip into a kind of lawn, I put myself to look at the sea and I see a wave”, is the sweetened version of that amusing chat. But so it was: that day Giorgio put his eyes on the most famous left of the Lazio coast, immediately baptizing her Banzai Pipeine, in honor of the Hawaiian spot. Forty -one years later, in a world of evolved surfing, and in an Italy that as a small nation now has thousands of practitioners and even several professional surfers, that same wave and its right twin – which was discovered shortly after – is really the most surfed in Italy “.

Winner of the National Championship in the 1980s was also national. «Over the years, many pioneers have stopped surfing, he didn’t. Has crossed all the periods of the short but intense history of the tricolor surfstarting precisely from the dawn, then passing through the period of the first associations and first races and finally coming to the present day, cheering for Leonardo Fioravanti, perhaps not surprisingly born to a handful of kilometers from Banzai and in a coast that has always been rich in talents “.

«Giorgio He loved Costa Rica, and right there in 2020 he casually discovered that he had brain cancer: a fall from the bike, the control CT, then the outcome. He immediately made himself operated in Rome, but without ever giving up an inch, without falling or citing. The disease told on social networks, the carefree time with his wife Carola and the joy for the birth of his daughter Nicola so called in honor of the father famous tennis player, the commitment to tell his story and that of the pioneers, then waves and still surfed waves also in Costa Rica despite the swarms caused by chemo and a tumor among the most aggressive that was struggling to regress. It is not rhetoric to write it, he fought trying not to get back, also enjoying his life, as in his style, and returning every time he could at the call of freedom that the sea and the ocean whispered in his ear. Giorgio Pietrangeli inherits a story that will continue to guide future generations. A modern hero, perhaps among the few to already have the monument in life, the natural one of Banzai. We are sure that in the next few days it will certainly be remembered by thousands of people: it will not be a coincidence, but the weather cards say that the waves will appear again in the Mediterranean after a long period of the heat and flat. We want to think about it: it is only the last of its gifts ».