Pietro Bixio (11 August 1875 – 26 July 1905) was an Italian

track cyclist Track cycling is a bicycle racing sport usually held on specially built banked tracks or velodromes using purpose-designed track bicycles. History Track cycling has been around since at least 1870. When track cycling was in its infancy, it wa ...

. Pietro Bixio won the Italian professional sprint championship three times, in 1895, 1903 and 1904. In 1900 he raced during the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

at the ''Grand Prix de l’Exposition'', a race for professionals for 15.000

French Francs The franc (, ; sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money. It w ...

, the biggest prize purse in the world at the time. Bixio was eliminated in the semi-final. In the ''Grande Course de Nations'' team competition over 1500 meters (a kind of

points race A points race is a mass start track cycling event involving large numbers of riders simultaneously on track. It was an Olympic event for men between 1984–2008 and for women 1996–2008. Starting in 2012, the points race is one of the omnium even ...

) he was third (teaming up with Gian Ferdinando Tomaselli and Giuseppe Singrossi). At the 1902 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in

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, Bixio won the bronze medal in the sprint tournament, becoming the first Italian to win a medal at the World Championships. In 1903 he was also third in the prestigious ''

Grand Prix de Paris The Grand Prix de Paris is a Group 1 flat horse race in France open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies. It is run at Longchamp over a distance of 2,400 metres (about 1½ miles), and it ...

''. Other wins include the ''Gran Premio d'Italia'' in 1895, the ''Gran Premio della U.V.I.'' in 1899 and the ''Groote Prijs van Antwerpen'' in 1903. Bixio died in 1905, aged 29, from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

Literature

Volker Kluge Volker Kluge (born 14 October 1944) is a German sports journalist and former sports official in East Germany. Career Kluge was born in Altenburg. From 1967 to 1971 he studied journalism in Leipzig. He became member of the Socialist Unity Party o ...

: ''Olympische Sommerspiele. Die Chronik I. Athen 1896 – Berlin 1936.'' Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00715-6, p. 72.

References

1875 births 1905 deaths Italian male cyclists Italian track cyclists 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Italy Infectious disease deaths in Liguria Cyclists from Liguria Sportspeople from Genoa {{Italy-cycling-bio-stub