Cosimo Pinto

At the beginning of the 1960s Cosimo Pinto, a soldier from Novara, vied with 1960 Olympic bronze medallist Giulio Saraudi for the honour of being Italy’s top amateur light-heavyweight boxer. Pinto’s breakthrough into the highest international class came in 1963 when he won gold at the Mediterranean Games in his home country. He then travelled to Tokyo where he won the Pre-Olympic tournament with a knockout over Japanese fighter Tadayuki Maruyama. Although he had emerged as one of the favourites for the Olympic title, before he could represent Italy in Tokyo, he still had the matter of defeating Sauradi to gain selection. This was duly achieved.

At the Olympics Pinto had a relatively straightforward path to the final but then came up against the Soviet Aleksey Kiselyov who had greatly impressed in the preliminary bouts. The fight developed into a fairly negative affair. Two judges awarded the contest to the Italian by a single point whilst the other three had the two men level at 59 points apiece. Two of the tied judges awarded their preference to Kiselyov but crucially the German judge opted for Pinto and the man from Novara was crowned Olympic champion.

After the victory in Tokyo Pinto won two Italian championships (1965 and 1967) and in 1967 he was bronze medal winner at the European Championships held in Roma. Pinto decided to retire from boxing prior to the Mexico City Olympics whilst still only 25 years of age to concentrate on his career as a bank official.