loris bertolacci

George Bertolacci

My dad loved sport. Talk about functional strength. He used to grab 100kgs at 45 and stand there and military press it for rep after rep. Then he could press me overhead. At his heaviest he was 155kgs and at his fittest was 110kgs. Big.

When I trained in Italy , all his mates in Livorno ( near Pisa) used to tell me about how he was the best arm wrestler going around and how they used to bet on Giorgio in the bars. He had massive wrists and even at my strongest he killed me.

Dad played Rugby Union in Italy with Livorno and was the kicker. He also played representative water polo and was a very good swimmer. He represented Tuscany in Athletics also and did a stint in graeco roman wrestling. All at state level.

He had a game or two of Aussie Rules in 1952, I think with Reservoir and kicked a few with place kicks. He came out to OZ in 1951 ! Apparently he replaced a player who went to Essendon so the story goes. He only had been in Australia for a year but had worked with the Americans in the war and so spoke English. He even had a training run in February with Fitzroy the next year, after a game with Reservoir and rode his bike to the wharf for work then back to the Brunswick Oval for training and promptly did his hamstring badly on the first night of training. So he started athletics again and competed with Coburg. He represented the state in the throws after that and was the anchor man for the wharfies at Port Melbourne and this shot was in the Herald Sun of those days.

He played Table Tennis a lot at a high standard and at 130kgs used to play against 50kg Asian guys at Albert Park. He had a short temper so sometimes the bat went flying and his opponent was in fear of his life.

He did a lot of soccer coaching in the 60’s until he started coaching me in Athletics. He started me in shot put in 1967 and I boomed. But like so many young people by 16 I knew it all and went on a long distance running binge to lose weight and as he had told me would happen, my throwing career faltered.

The last athlete he coached was Saverio Rocca in the discus and the big Sav had to come to my dads house and tell him that he was playing with Collingwood. I could see Saverio was nervous and dad was not happy. After all Sav was a better athlete than he was a footballer and I think dad knew he had lost a huge talent. Before that he coached many athletes and the best was Paul Nandapi. Paul won a heap of titles and medals in the commonwealth games. But with dad at 16 he was throwing mid 50’s with a senior discus and almost 17 metres in the shot put. Then he went to the AIS at 18 . Dad had a real knack of getting young athletes up and he won so many championships over 20 years. He never overtrained them and always made it fun. They sprinted and jumped and did a bit of everything and not too much of anything. It worked. The AIS sent him a plaque years later for his contribution the sport

He started the second pizza shop in Melbourne ( GIPIS) after TOTOS and one day 2 drunk guys came in and started a fight. I ran in and they knocked me out. I was 16. He grabbed them both and threw them in the car and when I came to, made me hold them and we drove to the police. One was the middleweight boxing champion of Australia. One chap once grabbed a pizza and ran out, and dad at 45 sprinted out the shop and ran down High Street and rugby tackled him to the ground. Big fast twitch man. The thief coudn’t believe it. Lots of Fitzroy players lived in the Northern Suburbs and they came to GIPIS after a game. Dad was a great sketch artist and would make funny sketches of players like Gary Wilson.

We always had sportspeople around our house. Kevin Murray ( Fitzroy Captain) lived up the road in Reservoir and was a real friend of the family. Whenever Italian sportspeople would come out to OZ Dad would seek them out and invite them home and Mum ( Rosa ) would cook them a treat. Fencers, athletes, boxers. All world class sportspeople at our house. I remember once dad picked up this boxer who was going to fight Johnny Famechon as he marched to a World Title. The boxer was from Livorno ( dads town) and in the car he told us he was retired ( Ex – European Champ) and was out only to earn some money and help Famechon get up the rankings!

I think a special day was Sundays at the Bertolacci house. We would train at the Preston Athletics Track at Edwardes Lake. Often some good throwers would appear to train with us like Matt Barber and Phil Nettle and other behemoths. They would come home to Lunch with Paul Nandapi and a few other big guys and mum ( Rosa) would have about 100kgs of pasta ready and 189 Schnitzels and bowls of potatoes and so on. They ate and ate. I watched in amazement. Then they went in the lounge room and watched World of Sport and fell asleep. When carbed up they would the weights on Sunday night.

Once Saverio went to Collingwood , dad decided to wrap it up and I wish he had kept coaching. Kept him switched on and a step ahead of diabetes. After that he moved to Rosebud and lost touch with coaching and fell into ill health. Rudy Villani my cousin ( and a great athlete) said at dads funeral that George had given us our love of sport and an appreciation of all sports. He loved to watch great athletes and loved all sports ( loved AFL) and this was very important for our overall sports development.

Thank god he died before all the crap was written about me in the media in 2006. Mum and Dad would never have understood it and to be honest nor have I. Had nothing to do with sport dad. But one thing that dad left me was a love of sport, and that remains and I will coach and produce athletes and high level performance  just like he did .

July 31, 2007 - Posted by Loris Bertolacci | AFL, General, Strength and Conditioning, Track and Field, Uncategorized