In a ceremony of great symbolic value held at the City Hall of the City of Rijeka, the Italian champion Abdon Pamich was awarded the title of honorary member of the Rijeka Olympians Association, at the initiative of the Faculty of Law of the University of Rijeka and in cooperation with the 'Jean Monnet' chair on EU law, politics and sports diplomacy and the Rijeka Olympians Club.
At the ceremony - the Italian Embassy in Zagreb reported in a note - were present the Consul General of Italy in Rijeka, Iva Palmieri, and several local authorities, including the Mayor of the city, Marko Filipović, and the Rector of the University of Rijeka, Snježana Prijić-Samaržija. Pamich, born in Rijeka in 1933, is one of the most decorated Italian athletes of all time in the 50 km march speciality at the Olympic Games, awarded the bronze medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics and the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In 1961 he set the 50 km world record on the Olympic Stadium track.
He was inducted into the Italian Sport 'Hall of Fame' of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), among the best 140 athletes of all time. Having left his hometown as an exile at the end of the Second World War, he grew up in the Novara refugee camp, then moved with his family to Genoa, where he began his sporting career. Particularly fond of his homeland, he actively worked for the preservation and dissemination of the historical memory of the exodus, also within the Society of Fiuman Studies.
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