Gustavo MARZI

One of Italy's excellent foil and sabre fencers of the 1930s, Gustavo Marzi won seven Olympic medals. Two of them were gold, the first coming in the individual foil in 1932. Losing two bouts in the preliminaries, he was unbeaten in the final pool, beating all nine opponents. Strangely enough, he did not defend his title in 1936, but did compete with the Italian team, and won all but one of his bouts to help claim the gold. In addition two his gold medals, he won five silvers. Three of these came in the team sabre, where the Hungarians dominated. Marzi also collected an impressive amount of medals at the World Championships (unofficial status through 1935), winning 10 titles, two in the individual foil (1935, 1937), seven in team foil (1929-31, 1934-35, 1937-38) and one in team sabre (1938). By comparison, Marzi's record at Italian championships was relatively poor, collecting two individual titles in the foil (1943, 1946) and two in the sabre (1934-34). He died at age 57 due to lung cancer.