The editors Monday, March 27, 2023, 9:57 p.m
Grief in the world of journalism: Gianni Minà died at the age of 84. The announcement was made via a Facebook post: “Gianni Miná passed away after a brief heart condition. He was never left alone and surrounded by the love of his family and closest friends. A special thanks goes to Prof. Fioranelli and the staff of the Villa del Rosario Clinic, who gave us the freedom to say goodbye with serenity”.
The beginnings of Tuttosport: the career of Gianni Minà
Born in Turin on May 17, 1938, in his early 20s he began his journalistic career in 1959 at Tuttosport, of which he was director from 1996 to 1998. The following year, he made his debut at Rai collaborating on sports coverage of the Rome 1960 Olympics. In his endless experience as a reporter, he covered eight world championships and seven Olympics, as well as dozens of world boxing championships, including the historic ones the time of Muhammad Ali. After working for “Sprint”, a sports magazine by Maurizio Barendson, he worked from 1965 on documentation and research for numerous programs, including “Tv7”, “AZ, un fatto come e perché”, “Dribbling”, “Odeon. All that is show” and “Gulliver”. With Renzo Arbore and Maurizio Barendson he founded “L’altra Domenica” and in 1976 he was engaged by “Tg2” directed by Andrea Barbato. In 1981 he won the “Premio Saint Vincent” Best TV Journalist of the Year After working with Giovanni Minoli on Mixer, he made his debut as the presenter of Blitz, a raid program he co-authored that has featured guests such as Eduardo De Filippo, Federico Fellini, Jane Fonda , Enzo Ferrari, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and precisely Muhammad Ali.
The historical interview with Fidel Castro and the documentaries about Ali and Maradona
Minà followed the Louisville boxer throughout his career, so that the book “Il mio Alì”, the result of his articles, created in 2014 with Rai Eri and distributed by Rizzoli, bears his signature, and the feature film “Cassius Clay, a history American”. Unforgettable interviews with sports legends, the Beatles, but above all the sixteen-hour interview conducted in 1987 with Cuban President Fidel Castro for a documentary on which a book is based: the report entitled “Fidel tells Che”. A great one Friend of Massimo Troisi, but also of Diego Armando Maradona, about whom he wrote in 2001 “Maradona: I will never be an ordinary man”, a 70-minute reportage confession with El Pibe de Oro at the end of the most painful years of the former Argentine champion.