Funeral Oration Pronounced by CONI President Petrucci in Honour of Primo Nebiolo
Citius, altius, fortius. The IOC motto. The essence of any sports discipline and more than any other, that of athletics, the queen of all disciplines.
Primo Nebiolo – the friend and companion of all those who gathered here to pay homage to his memory – had made out of this ancient commandment his rule of life. Without sparing himself, until the extreme sacrifice – and this should not seem occasional rhetoric – never avoiding the commitments his many mandates required and received, but honouring them with all his strength, even when the burden of the years and the constant efforts should have suggested him to go slower, lower, and quieter.
But had he behaved that way, he would not have been Primo Nebiolo and he would have been criticised precisely by those who did not interpret as a virtue, his wanting to be always at the centre of things.
Primo Nebiolo has always been a great sports leader.
They know it, at the University Sport Centre which was his first club (in time and in his heart).
They know it, at the CUSI and at FISU, the cradles of Italian and World university sport, the sport Nebiolo loved most, fully convinced as he was, that youth should divide itself between schoolrooms and sports fields, in the plenitude of its physical and intellectual energies, to assert that sport also needs people of a high cultural level.
Italian sport knows it, and above all Italian athletics which by entrusting him thirty years ago with the chairmanship of FIDAL, took his example to outdo itself and become a phenomenon which was great and open to all, rather than being great and reversed for an élite.
World athletics know it, for by following his leadership, it assumed the dimensions of an empire.
The whole Olympic Movement knows it – and President Samaranch is the first to witness here – and spurred by his creativeness, his apparent provocations, his example of wild activism, his courage for throwing himself towards far away objectives, perfectly interpreted his messages.
But Primo Nebiolo was not only a great sports leader, he was also the fortunate interpreter, at crucial moment, of the role of sport in the history of our times. Prodigiously gifted with clairvoyance, he knew how to use sport in all its values of brotherhood, loyalty and universality, in the service of peace and friendship between people, thus obtaining unimaginable results that were denied to great politicians.
Primo Nebiolo will leave a huge gap. We say it now, but very soon we will concretely realise how true this formal expression is. Our commitment, the commitment of the whole Italian and International sport will be that of filling this gap, by inspiring themselves from what was uninterrupted testimony, and in some way, a real testament.
A very special thought goes to his wife Giovanna who more than anyone else, was very close to Primo Nebiolo. A very sweet companion, capable of comforting him with her affection and appropriate advice. The friends of Primo Nebiolo will continue to be her faithful friends.