Italian sport is in mourning. Giovanni "Nino" Benvenuti, one of the best boxers in history and certainly one of the most beloved athletes, passed away today at the age of 87. Olympic welterweight champion at Rome '60 and then world superwelterweight champion (between 1965 and 1966), European middleweight champion (between 1965 and 1967) and again world middleweight champion (between 1967 and 1970), Nino Benvenuti was the symbol of an Italy that does not give up and asserts itself on the roof of the world despite difficulties. Born April 26, 1938, in Isola d'Istria (then Italy, now Slovenia), he discovered his passion for the prize ring early on. A love that led him to travel more than 30 km by bicycle in order to reach his training gym, in Trieste. The same Trieste that later welcomed him when he was forced to flee, with his parents and siblings by his side, for an uncertain future as an exile. A future for which Nino fought untiringly. Challenge after challenge. Fundamental was the one he won in Rome with Russian Yury Radonyak that earned him Olympic gold; among the epic ones, faced as a professional, one cannot forget the trilogy with Emile Griffith and those with Carlos Monzon, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, which entered by right among the Fights of the Year. Fought and partisan the all-Italian ones with Sandro Mazzinghi. In 1968 Benvenuti won the Fighter of the Year award, the only Italian to have achieved it. Just as historic was his induction, in 1992, into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and then, for his exploits in American rings, into the National Italian-American Sport Hall of Fame (with such sports icons as Rocky Marciano and Joe di Maggio), despite the fact that he was not a U.S. citizen. After his boxing career he tried his hand at acting, but the best role he played was in the ring.