28. Februar 2007  
Italy  
Artistic Gymnastics

The Italian gymnastics legend Giovanni CARMINUCCI has died

Giovanni CARMINUCCI
*14.11.1939 - + 19.02.2007

... everybody called him "Don Giovanni",
- in the days in the "Terme de Caracalla", when 21 year old Giovanni Carminucci won Olympic silver, just 0.025 points behind parallel bars gold medallist Boris SCHACHLIN  - and ahead of Japan's Takashi ONO - as well as the jubilantly received bronze medal for the national team of the host country, Italy, alongside the 19 year old Franco MENICHELLI.

As a 32 year old, he was still putting on a brilliant performance at the Madrid Palacio de Deportes in 1971, where he won the European championships - his Stutzkehr with a full turn to the upper arm position came to be known as a 'Carminucci'.

Our editors learned today that one of the most scintillating figures of European elite gymnastics of the sixties of the last century, the Italian Giovanni CARMINUCCI, died on February 19, aged only 67 years.

Photo: Flick Flack - World Stage of Gymnastics

... a 'nobleman' of gymnastics
Not at all like Mozert's rather unscrupulous character, Giovanni Carminucci became a noble sportsman in Italy and dominated Italian gymnastics for a decade along with Franco Menichelli.
Between 1959 (Kopenhagen) and 1971 (Madrid) he participated in six European Championships, won bronze all-round in Luxemburg in 1961 and was one of the top ten allrounders five times.

Carminucci won the title of European champion at the vault (1961), the high bar (Belgrade, 1963) and, at his last European championships in 1971 and at no less than 32 years of age (!), on the parallel bars, for which he had previously won a bronze medal twice, being a virtuoso between the bars.
He had a debt of gratitude in particular to the Swiss trainer Jack Günthardt, who led the Italian team to three Olympic bronze medals in 1960 in just two years of training: team, floor (Menichelli) and Carminucci's medal on the parallel bars.

"Gymnastics... formed and strengthend my character and trained me to pursue seemingly unattainable goals successfully', Giovanni Carminucci once said retrospectively.
The European gymnastics family pays tribute to this magnificent Italian athlete!
(c) Eckhard Herholz, GYMmedia,
Quotes from "Flick Flack - World Stage of Gymnastics";
A. Götze/H.-J. Zeume