Riccardo Steinleitner

A member of the Armida Torino club, rower Riccardo Steinleitner had been competing for just a few months when, as a complete unknown, he won the first 1936 Olympic single sculls trial. A few days later he won the international youth regatta in Lucerne, dominating from start to finish. After winning a second trial Steinleitner was selected for the Olympics at just 21-years-of-age.

At the Berlin Games Steinleitner finished second in the heat and was then eliminated the repêchage, missing out on qualifying for the semi-finals by just one tenth of a second, beaten by the eventual bronze medallist, Dan Barrow of the USA.

Returning to Italy, Steinleitner won the national single sculls title for the first of four consecutive years. Before ending his career, partly due to the World War II, he had participated in two European Championships: in 1937 and 1938, when he narrowly missed the podium in Milano, finishing fourth behind winner Josef Hasenöhrl, the Austrian Olympic silver medallist two years earlier. After the War, Steinleitner devoted himself primarily to coaching, at his club Armida and also the Italian national team in the early 1970s.