He had messy pockets: "On Saturday mornings he empties them: out come banknotes, loose change, receipts, brochures, already-used tram tickets, a credit card he rarely uses, his journalist's pass and his health insurance card. But above all, many newspaper clippings. To be precise, scraps, single-column news items stolen from the page, though before filing them away (in his own way) he always checks what's on the back. Very often interviews, with a part underlined. Very analog".

Giuseppe Smorto describes Gianni Mura this way, the fourth of "The 4 Gianni" (Minerva, 234 pages, 18 euros), whom he directed in the Sports section of "Repubblica". And of the four, instinctively, Mura is the most lived Gianni, the most deeply explored, and also the most beloved. Football, cycling, cuisine—he could have written (perhaps he did) everything about everything, and all at the same level, the highest, most personal level (even though his influence was often attributed to Gianni Brera). His "Seven Days of Bad Thoughts", a Sunday column—37 years, at least 1,300 installments—in which he flew from news stories to theatrical acts, from goals to books, complete with ratings, a 4 given to Agnelli, a 3 to Montezemolo, a 0.5 to Pope John Paul II. There were those who ignored him, those who took offense and got upset. There were those who replied: "Stefano Rodotà writes him (by hand) a clarification on an intervention as Privacy Guarantor". There were those who, like poet Vivian Lamarque, thanked him: "She discovered with surprise that he's in the phone book". There were those who responded with a telegram: "I will treasure your advice. Thanks and best wishes, Gerry Scotti".

When Mura engaged in mnemonic challenges, encyclopedic contests: "Letter T, Female characters from songs (Teresa, Tosca, you continue), blonde footballers (Balzaretti, Nedved, go on for half an hour) up to an impossible 'novel titles backwards starting with S' (The Promised Spouses, The Book's Sand, The Wild Lands)". When Mura booked restaurants under the surname Moretti. When the restaurant didn't recognize him, when they recognized him between the first and second course and the menu magically expanded, when a chef recognized him immediately and welcomed him saying: 'Mr. Mura, we've only been missing the Pope and you'. When at a "Those Who Love Football" show they introduced him as "the greatest living sports journalist".

That time Mura surprised everyone by saying that "the most beautiful interview of my life" was with a volleyball player, Rodica Popa, Romanian, a spiker, and he asked for two pages on two consecutive days (a proposal that was rejected). That time he bet on the vintage of an Armagnac, said '72 instead of '71, but the innkeeper offered it to him anyway (but I'm a witness to that time—we were at the Tour de France—when he got the vintage right and won the bet). That time Mura, still at the Tour de France, left flowers at the Casartelli monument, silent for a minute in front of the monument, then silent for another two hours in the car. That time when, with his wife Paola, he landed in an archipelago of dreams of strict Muslim faith, no wine or beer, and he said he would never go back. That time when, with the complicity of colleague Fabrizio Ravelli, he created 92 anagrams with the name and surname of their editor Eugenio Scalfari.

That time Mura wrote, a year after Gianni Brera's death, an ode in hendecasyllables (and this ode materialized in one of the 33 boxes full of books, clippings and other papers, left at his death), which ends like this: "Here I remember him as a great gentleman / as a wild boar, as a peasant / as a poet and a glass of wine / as a friend, as a fighter. / A hug, Gioan, from Giovannino. / Because, in the end, only the heart matters".

(end of the fifth installment – to be continued)

the first installment: https://www.tuttobiciweb.it/article/1776236004

the second installment: https://www.tuttobiciweb.it/article/2026/04/16/1776238325/gianni-brera-ciclismo-storia-del-giornalismo-fausto-coppi-hugo-koblet

the third installment: https://www.tuttobiciweb.it/article/2026/04/17/1776375420/gianni-clerici-giornalismo-sportivo-tennis-ciclismo-storia-dello-sport

the fourth installment: https://www.tuttobiciweb.it/article/2026/04/18/1776411508/gianni-mina-giornalismo-sportivo-ciclismo-storia-dello-sport-repubblica