GOODBYE MAESTRO. MY ORMEZZANO

IN-DEPTH | 30/12/2024 | 08:25
di Giorgio Viberti
When a "Great" like Gian Paolo Ormezzano passes away forever, many are tempted to remember him by self-celebrating: "I knew him well, that time when together we went, wrote, lived...". I instead - the last among the small - would only like to try to convey to the younger ones an image, indeed two, of the extraordinary human and professional stature of GPO, as we called him, supreme and inimitable journalist, truly unique in his genre, with whom I had the privilege of sharing many years in the newsroom of the Turin newspaper La Stampa.
A few months ago I had gone to visit him at his home and he, Gian Paolo, with his usual irony even about his precarious health conditions, gave me two of his books - among which I particularly recommend the precious "I was really there, reportage from two viruses: covid and journalism", Minerva Editions - along with a avalanche of hilarious stories and anecdotes, from which I chose the following.
"Autumn 1974, in Kinshasa, former Léopoldville, Zaire, former Belgian Congo, dictator Mobutu gifts his subjects the boxing match of the millennium for the World Heavyweight Championship between the challenger Muhammad Ali, 32 years old, and the holder George Foreman, 25". The first is considered the true black man of Africa returning to his people, Foreman instead is the "Uncle Tom" of America, friend of whites. A few months ago I was director of Tuttosport and had gone to South Africa for a report on apartheid, but I thought of reaching Kinshasa to try to interview Ali. I call Gianni Minà, also from Turin, with whom I had grown professionally at Tuttosport. After 10 minutes he calls me back and tells me to contact Angelo Mirinda, called Dundee, who actually was named Mirena or Merenda, like his father who had Calabrian origins. Dundee was Ali's trainer. I arrive in Kinshasa without accreditation, a perfect stranger. In front of the gym where Ali was preparing, there are over a thousand journalists, waiting for the few phrases granted to them in the brief daily press conferences. I look for and identify Dundee, who immediately asks me if I am Minà's friend. I nod and he takes me inside to Ali, with whom I talk one-on-one for almost two hours, present besides us only Mirinda and Ali's personal masseur. 'Even one of the kings of ancient Rome was black, like me' Ali asserts at a certain point. 'No' I dare to contradict him, remembering by heart the names of the seven kings of Rome, none of whom was of color. 'Yet there was a certain Hannibal, or Hasdrubal, who was black!!!' - Ali retorts. 'He came later, was not king of Rome and was not black but of Arab origins' I feel the duty to add and thus trigger Ali's anger, who gets up, tries to throw himself at me but is stopped at the last moment by the masseur, who fortunately was bigger than him. But can you imagine? I risked being knocked out by a punch from Ali, the greatest of all! I would definitely have gone down in history, what a missed opportunity..." concluded Gian Paolo, with his contagious laugh.
Second anecdote. Sydney Olympics 2000: Gian Paolo Ormezzano is sent by La Stampa from Turin to also follow swimming competitions. He personally witnesses the first gold in the history of Italian swimming, conquered by Domenico Fioravanti who even made a double: 100 and 200 breaststroke. GPO celebrates, frescoes, chisels as usual, but for once he stumbles in one of his reports. In the pool, the Dutchman Pieter Van den Hoogenband is raging, who wins gold in the 100m freestyle, the queen race, beating the immense Russian Popov, and then repeats with a world record in the 200m freestyle, ahead of the home favorite Thorpe and our Rosolino. GPO sends the piece about Van den Hoogenband in the late Italian afternoon, when in Sydney it is already almost dawn. And fatigue betrays him: in the article, always exemplary, the complicated name "Van den Hoogenband" is written in four different ways. In the La Stampa newsroom, I was used to passing the swimming pieces, a sport that had been assigned to me for about ten years. I discover GPO's typos, correct them but say nothing in the newsroom and the next day, when Gian Paolo calls the editors-in-chief, I ask to speak to him: "Gpo, sorry if I dare - I tell him measuring my words and with the right deference that Ormezzano deserved - but you wrote Van den Hoogenband in four different ways. I just wanted to tell you, because maybe if your future pieces are passed by a colleague who doesn't know much about swimming, there is a risk that the error will come out in the newspaper..." I wait with some fear for his reaction, but GPO gives me yet another life lesson: "Thank you Giorgio, fortunately you passed it. Here due to time zone problems we sleep very little and are often very tired, but these are the Olympics, we must live them as much as possible and to the fullest. Forgive me for the errors. And thank you again!" Here is who Gian Paolo Ormezzano was: an absolute giant of journalism, a great writer, a man of vast culture, but also a humble, kind, witty, ironic, fun, inimitable, unique person...

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