Lydia Bongiovanni

Lydia Bongiovanni was an all-around athlete who competed in sprints, hurdles, and the discus throw, beginning her career in 1929 with Società Ginnastica di Torino. She was chosen for the 1936 Italian Olympic team for the 4x100 metre relay while she was working as an administrative assistant at SIP, the Torino based electric company. Bongiovanni stopped competed shortly after Berlin.

During World War II she married a Mr. Siviero, about whom little is known, but the marriage was a brief one. In 1943 Angelo Tollini was selected to work for ARAR, the Italian state corporation that handled the Allies’ munition dumps. Bongiovanni served as his assistant and befriended many of the Nazis who met with Tollini, and they came to trust her. Bongiovanni was working for the resistance, however, and that trust would lead to her sending a lot of information back to the allies via underground wires.

At the end of the war Lydia met Rudolph Hruska, an Austrian engineer who worked for Porsche, and they would marry. After the war Lydia returned to work for SIP but then moved to Finmeccanica, the most important state mechanical corporation in Italy.

Personal Best: 100 – 12.9 (1936).