Arnaldo Pambianco

Arnaldo Pambianco competed at the Melbourne Olympic Games 1956, placing seventh in the road race won by Ercole Baldini. Pambianco finished second to Sante Freo in that year’s Italian Amateur Road Race Championships, but won the title in 1957, when he was also runner-up to the Belgian Leo Proost in that year’s World Amateur Road Race Championships. Pambianco turned professional the following year, seving as a support rider to Baldini with the Legnano team.

Having placed seventh at the 1960 Tour de France, helping his teammate Gastone Nencini win the maillot jaune, Pambianco joined the Fides team in 1961 and won that year’s Giro d’Italia, known as the Giro del Centenario dell’Unità d’Italia (to celebrate the centenary of Italy’s unification). He rode professionally up to 1966 and in total competed in the Giro d’Italia nine times (1958-66), and the Tour de France on four occasions (1960-65). He also took part in four Professional Road Race Championships, with a fifth place in 1962 being his best finish. In 1964 Pambianco also won the Flanders Classic race, the Brabantse Pijl.

Pambianco later managed stores in Forlì, Rimini and Faenza, but also served as a deputy director sportif to Giancarlo Ferretti, as Ariostea’s sporting director. He later became director of a company that produced living rooms.

Unable to overcome the pain of the death of his wife in March 2022, with whom he had lived for 60 years, Pambianco committed suicide four months later by throwing himself from the roof of his house.