regata di Murano | Venice: I am not making this up

D’Este and Tezzat in the red gondolino nose to nose with the Vignottos on the brown boat. A culminating moment from one year and then 38 minutes of rowing. This is what the fans live for. But where’s that pesky crown?

Over the past 15 years or so, attention in the world of Venetian rowing races has been focused, like the sun through a lens, on two pairs of rivals: Rudi and Igor Vignotto, gondoliers and cousins from Sant’ Erasmo who have been rowing together since they were nine and ten years old, and Giampaolo D’Este and Ivo Redolfi Tezzat, both of them also gondoliers, rowing together a modest 14 years until their last outing in 2015.

No need to say that the rivalry has been intense, which is what everybody wants in sports, and it created an equally intense partisanship among fans who pursued unwinnable arguments about why their idols are the best and what the hell is wrong with the other guys.

At the regata of Murano in 2009, Igor Vignotto took the lead from D’Este and never looked back.

These four men faced off in almost every race each year, but the race that matters most is the Regata Storica, a roughly 40-minute struggle in the Grand Canal on the racing gondolas called gondolinos.

Winning the Regata Storica is a wonderful thing, but what each pair really wanted was to win it five years in a row, a feat which is almost impossible. If you manage it you have earned the title “re del remo” (king of the oar), which sounds a little lame but which, in fact, is a very big deal. Nobody has accomplished this since 1985.

The Vignotto cousins have won the Regata Storica a record 15 times, but never five years consecutively. D’Este and Tezzat have won 7 times, also never consecutively. It’s maddening for everybody, but what can you expect in a race that depends on skill, strategy, and sheer luck? 2009 was the fifth year in a row for D’Este and Tezzat — THE FIFTH YEAR — and 7 minutes into the race they capsized and nobody was even near them. There they were, floating by their boat as everybody else rowed past them. How embarrassing is that?

D’Este and Tezzat stayed together for a few more seasons, but being disqualified during the next year’s Storica (2010) and again in 2015 — and maybe other factors also — appeared to expunge whatever desire they still had to earn the crown. They both retired and concentrated on work, or backgammon, or their kids.

Since then the racing world has been pretty lackluster, as the Vignottos just kept on winning, practically whiling away the time on the course by checking their messages on their phones and discussing where to go on vacation. I know they love all those red pennants, but racking them up without breaking a visible sweat isn’t much fun after a while. I’ve heard it said.

But this year — new drama! A possible fourth consecutive win was on the horizon for the Vignottos when the required annual physical examination revealed that Igor’s career is over. Something to do with his heart, and cardiac situations are not to be taken lightly, or even permitted when it comes to getting your health certificate for the racing season.

This is Igor Vignotto (2009) who clearly feels that the real beauty of winning is that the other guy lost. There won’t be any more of these moments for him.

And then Igor’s heart took a punch no apparatus could measure: His cousin Rudi called their lifelong rival, Giampaolo D’Este, to propose that they team up together. And D’Este said yes.

Rudi Vignotto astern. He’s just moving the boat out of the way, but this image from two years ago has suddenly become somewhat poignant. Nobody imagined ever seeing anybody in the bow position with him except Igor, to say nothing of imagining D’Este there.

I don’t presume to know their reasoning, but seeing that each of them could sink a small cruiser with the weight of the pennants they’ve won, it might not be the need for more pennants. And seeing that the prize money is less than a working gondolier might earn in a week, it probably isn’t the money either.

It can only be the kingdom, the kingdom of the oar at long last, that could tempt them, even though 2018 will be the start of the five-year clock all over again.

Is this exciting? Maybe. And maybe not. Of course they have already been dubbed the “SuperCoppia” (super duo), because that’s obvious. But while it will be reasonably exciting to see this Voltron racing, it doesn’t necessarily promise to inspire the wild, thrilling, throat-lacerating excitement from fans and enemies alike that was the norm when these titans were rowing against each other.

Setting aside the prognostications for a few young fast-rising competitors, it’s very possible that the new duo will also win while checking their emails. Not made up: Their first race, today at Pellestrina on pupparinos, had them so far ahead that they throttled back to a stroll just to keep the distance between them and everybody else to something kind of reasonable and not, say, two kilometers.

One commentator remarked that this new match has been made “in the name of sport,” but it doesn’t seem very sporting to me. At least one person who was talking about it made a very interesting observation. “Well of course they’re going to win,” he said. “What fun is that? Me, I think each of them should have picked some younger partner — then we could really have seen some competition.”

That’s undoubtedly true, and a very original way of thinking. But if they’d done that, they might never get those crowns.

The blessing of the gondolinos a few days before the Regata Storica (2017). Everybody acts friendly, more or less.

For anyone curious to see the seesawing of these champions from year to year, check this out; you can see how hard it has been to even get close to a fifth year in a row:

(V is Rudi and Igor Vignotto, D’E is D’Este with Tezzat):

2002 V first, D’E second (this is the first year D’Este rowed with Tezzat)

2003 D’E first, V second

2004 V first, D’E second

2005 D’E first, V second

2006 D’E first V second

2007 D’E first V second

2008 D’E first V (Rudi with Leone Mao, Igor undergoing a year of suspension) third

2009 V first D’E withdrawn, capsizing

2010 V first D’E disqualified

2011 D’E first V second

2012 V first D’E second

2013 V first D’E second

2014 D’E first V second

2015 V first D’E disqualified

2016 V first no D’E

2017 V first no D’E

2018 Voltron?

Racy ideas

The prize ceremony at the regata of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and all the races this year, is sponsored by the Graspo de Ua, a restaurant which is in the process of becoming a small empire. Their sponsorship covers innovations such as the podium, the logo-laden T-shirts, each colored to match the corresponding pennant, and the bottle of bubbly to spray everywhere. Prize money? Not so much.

I have been brooding on the struggle between the Venetian rowing racers and the Comune, and I think some numbers might be illuminating.

I know I said in my last post that the racers don’t need the money, but the laborer is worthy of his hire, and the payments this year hover somewhere between risible and offensive. If I were a racer, I would indeed be angered by a city office named “Tutela Tradizioni” (protection of traditions) which does so little to keep this tradition going.

This year the city looked under the cushions of the divan and found some loose change, which permits them to offer prizes which would not be enough to pay for a fill-up at a gas station in Correctionville, Iowa.

The winner of the race pictured above — SS. Giovanni e Paolo, young men rowing gondolas solo — took home 221.20 euros ($293.67). The man who won the Regata di Murano, which is arguably the most important race of the year, scored 347.20 euros ($460.95).

The woman who won the Regata di Murano earned 221.20 euros ($293.67). The boy who won the same race took home 66 euros ($87.62). The boy who finished last got 33 euros ($43.81). And there are people in the city government who say they’re worried about the future of the races because so few boys show up to try out.

It gets better. The first four women to cross the finish line of the Regata de la Sensa got a pennant and a gold medal, which I think is nice, though money has a more immediate appeal. The other five women in the nine-boat field got zip. Niente. Zero. Same thing for the Regata di Malamocco.

And so it goes. The city manages to scrape up more for the Regata Storica, usually around 2,000 euros per man for the winning pair on the gondolinos, and downward from there for the other finishers.

This is so stupid that I can’t decide who to yell at first. It’s like inviting somebody to dinner and telling them to bring their own food.

But comes a ray of light glinting from a chest of gold doubloons, so to speak, from a faithful reader and friend (full disclosure).

This friend is American, by the way, which may explain why he sees ways to make money that the tired Old-World city government hasn’t yet considered. Evidently, what’s doable out in the big old vulgar tradition-free world beyond the bridge doesn’t seem so simple in our little tin-cup-rattling economy.

Let me say that I’m all in favor of the races being pure — whatever we think that means. But I don’t like them being poor. And I especially don’t like them not being, period. In case there was any doubt about that.

So here are some possible solutions:

He writes:

“It seems to me that an infusion of crass commercialism could get things back on track. E.g.:

1. All boats will bear corporate logos like Nike, Taco Bell, Trojans, Depend Diapers, whatever … and thus a ton of ad revenue will get directed into the “Rowers’ Pot.”

2. All rowers will be adorned with shirts and caps similarly garnished and bearing internet addresses of the race sponsors = more ad revenue for the RP.

3. TV rights will be sold for live distribution around the world on the Nat Geo channel, thus tapping Rupert Murdoch for the RP.

4. Buxom cheerleaders for the various teams, scantily clad, no doubt, will cheer and bounce around in unison on the waterfront.

5. Observers will be barraged with logo items for sale by shoreside vendors who’ll remit 20% to the RP.

6. There will be time-outs between races to run commercials for said products – so more RP dough.

7. Travel agents throughout Europe will be tithed on airline ticket sales to Venice during June each year to create yet more moolah for the RP.

8. Racers will be paid the same amount in cash by divvying up the RP (estimated at about 4.5 million euros per rower annually); trophies made of various precious metals and gems will signify winners, losers, etc. (Here I balk: The four pennants — red, white, blue and green — have to be maintained. IT’S TRADITION.)

9. Racers will get lifetime supplies of all products advertised during the regata.

10. UNESCO will declare the race a World Heritage Event, thus assuring it United Nations funding in perpetuity.”

I cannot think of one reason why not to do any or all of the above. The one thing everybody agrees on, racers and city, is that they all want more money. So if the city can’t seem to discover any way to get more money for the races (though they were pretty clever at getting 5 billion euros and counting for MOSE), then we should just face it and play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.

So the Graspo de Ua has paid for the podium (arguably unnecessary, though I understand that the company’s logo has to go somewhere); paid for the T-shirts (ditto), paid for the bubbly, which is nice, but everybody’s been fine without for about a hundred years, and paid for the pennants. What’s missing here is cash for the racers, which the Graspo, no less than the Comune, does not feel able to provide. Impressive sponsorship.

Chasing the elusive crown

Racy ideas