Giovanni Mangiante

Giovanni Mangiante began his gymnastics career following in the footsteps of his older brother Renzo and joining Brescia’s “Gymnasium” gymnastics club. In 1910, the brothers were key members of the club’s team winning an international gymnastics competition in Lyon. After attending a pre-Olympic training camp in Brescia, Giovanni made the team that dominated the team event in the European System, which focussed on apparatus exercises. In the years preceding World War I, little is known about his further participations and results.

In the wake of the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerpen, he tried a comeback and earned a spot on the final training camp in Cornigliano. However, he suddenly fell ill and did not recover in time, so that only his brother Renzo competed in Antwerpen. In 1924, he tried again to qualify for the Olympic Games but failed to make the team, hampered by a broken hand. This marked the end of his competitive career.

The son of a well-off building contractor in Brescia, Giovanni Mangiante was also a skilled aviator and pilot in the Italian air force in World War I. He was a friend of poet and aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio and took part in several of D’Annunzio’s air stunts. At the age of 41, he married Beatrice Giuseppina Maria Bergamini in Brescia.