Mario Zanin
Italy
Road Cycling
Overall Ranks
#4 among Italian Olympians
#4 among Road Cyclists
#3 among Italian Cyclists
Olympic Results
1964
Road Race - Gold
Total
Events - 1
Gold - 1
Mario Zanin was born on July 3, 1940 in Santa Lucia di Piave, Italy, and grew up playing soccer until he broke an ankle, at which point he switched to cycling. Prior to his appearance in the Olympics, he had won a couple of amateur races in Italy, including the national amateur road race in 1964.
He competed in the road race in 1964 in Tokyo, on an interesting course. It consisted of 8 laps of a 24 km course, which featured only one difficult climb, and due to that, and rainy weather on the day of the race, no one was ever able to separate from the pack for long. Each time a rider tried to break away, he was quickly pulled back into the pack, and by the end, there were 99 riders who finished within 0.2 seconds of each other. Zanin was one of two in the pack who was able to separate right before the finish, but only by a little over a bicycle length, and he was able to edge out Kjell Rodian of Denmark for the gold medal.
He turned pro soon after the Olympics, but his only professional victory was a single stage of the Vuelta a Espana, Spain's version of the Tour de France, before his retirement in 1968. Even though he only competed in a single event in his Olympic career, and it was an extremely close win, his ability to pull away from the pack when it mattered made him one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
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