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Why do Italian athletes wear blue?

Blue is nowhere on the Italian flag, yet it's all over every Italian sports team. So why does Italy wear blue?

Why do Italian athletes wear blue?
Italian softball player Erika Piancastelli at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Photo: KAZUHIRO FUJIHARA / AFP

As the delayed 2020 Olympics get underway in Tokyo, Italian supporters will be rooting for gli Azzurri – ‘the Blues’.

Blue – or to get more specific, azure – has been the colour of Italy’s national sports teams for close to 100 years, despite featuring nowhere on the country’s green-white-and-red flag.

Your more poetically inclined friends might try to convince you that the deep blue donned by Italian athletes serves to remind them of Italy’s enviable sea and sky. But the real explanation is historical, and somewhat more prosaic.

We need to go back in time to a different Italy – before World War Two, before Fascism and before Italy became a republic in 1946.

READ ALSO: ‘Il Canto degli Italiani’: What the Italian national anthem means – and how to sing it

Before Italians voted to get rid of the monarchy 75 years ago, the country was ruled by the House of Savoy, a royal dynasty that first grew to power in the western part of the Alps, in what we’d now call north-west Italy and south-east France.

The Savoys gradually expanded their realm until it extended over the entire Italian peninsula, cannily becoming figureheads in the drive to unify Italy into a single kingdom in 1861.

The newly born Kingdom of Italy featured the House of Savoy’s coat of arms, a white cross on a red background, over the national flag we know today. 

Image by Flanker via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5

But wait: notice the blue border around that cross?

That’s because blue was the third colour of the House of Savoy: being devoted Catholics, the dynasty invoked the protection of the Virgin Mary – traditionally depicted wearing deep blue – by adding the colour to its red-and-white banners.

The particular shade – defined as “a shade of saturated blue between peacock blue and periwinkle” – became known as azzurro Savoia, or ‘Savoy blue’.

READ ALSO: Italian word of the day: ‘Azzurro’

So a few decades later, when Italy began sending athletes to the newly revived Olympic Games and created the first national football team, and sports associations found themselves in need of national colours, the choices were green, red, white or blue. 

The one they went with, at least at first, was white. The first football team to represent Italy internationally, in 1910, played its earliest matches in a white kit topped off with a little tricolour ribbon. 

It wasn’t until 1911 that the team adopted its new official jersey: blue with a red-and-white Savoy cross over the heart. They first donned it for a match against Hungary on January 6th 1911 (and promptly lost 1-0).

Photo: public domain via Wikimedia Commons

White remained the football team’s back-up colour, as well as the colour worn by most Italian athletes at the 1912 Olympic Games. 

But with the establishment of the Italian National Olympic Committee in 1914, a drive began to get all athletes representing Italy in the same kit. By the time of the 1932 Games in Los Angeles, light blue uniforms – still with the Savoy cross – had become more or less standard.

Here’s Italian hurdler Luigi Facelli in blue shaking hands with his rival, David Burghley of Britain in white. 

Photo: public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The design underwent some modifications over the years. Benito Mussolini’s Fascists, predictably, made it uglier by adding their symbol, the Roman fasces or bundle of rods that represents strength in unity, next to the Savoy coat of arms.

At one point Mussolini even insisted that Italian competitors swap their blue jerseys for black ones; athletes alternated between black and blue jerseys at the infamous 1936 Olympics in Berlin, as well as other events of the late 1930s.

Italy’s football team at the 1938 World Cup in France. Photo: AFP

With World War Two and the defeat of the Fascists, Italy’s kit was subject to more changes.

The 1946 referendum that made Italy a republic meant that it could get rid of both the fasces and the Savoy cross from its uniforms.

Their spot over the heart were replaced by a tricolour flag that adorns most national sports kits to this day.

Italy’s Kiri Tontodonati and Aisha Rocek compete in the women’s pair heats in Tokyo. Photo: Luis ACOSTA / AFP

The shade of Italy’s blue has also varied, from sky blue to navy to something close to turquoise. (It helps that Italy has a surprisingly large number of words for blue: learn more here.)

White with blue accents remains the most common alternative kit, but Italian athletes have also been known to don black or red (no green, for reasons we can only assume are aesthetic).

Variations are especially common in certain events – notably cycling, motor racing, skiing, skating and other winter sports.

Italian speed skater Yvonne Daldossi at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Photo by JUNG YEON-JE / AFP

At the Tokyo Games, Italian competitors are wearing mainly blue, with white and blue as a back-up. 

Meanwhile their ceremonial tracksuits – designed by who other than Giorgio Armani – are black with a circular tricolour on the front. The Azzurri put them on for the podium, so they’re the ones you really want to see.

Italy’s new gold medallist in taekwondo, Vito Dell’Aquila. (Photo: Javier SORIANO / AFP)

Member comments

  1. Maybe they didn’t choose green because that is the colour of the Irish team. Flag is almost the same too – green, white and gold not orange or the Italian red.

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FOOD AND DRINK

Do Italians really eat pasta every day?

Pasta is the foundation of Italian cuisine and Italians have a reputation for eating it nearly every day. But is this reality or myth?

Do Italians really eat pasta every day?

Pasta is the cornerstone of Italian cuisine and an essential staple of Italians’ diet, hence the popularity of the adage Toglietemi tutto ma non la pasta! (‘Take everything away from me except pasta’).

But there is a widespread belief among foreign nationals that people in the bel paese eat it every single day of the week. 

Is this reality or myth?

According to a survey from research platform YouGov Italia, ‘only’ 17 percent of Italians eat pasta every day or at least six days a week. 

The majority of Italians (37 percent) consume pasta two to three times a week, while 30 percent say they eat it four to five times a week. 

Finally, 8 percent eat pasta just once a week.

While the survey seems to disprove the claim that Italians generally eat pasta every day (only a minority does), does that mean that they are not as big pasta eaters as we may have originally thought?

Not really. 

Italians are still the leading pasta consumers in the world as the average person in the country eats some 23.1 kilograms of it every year (that’s nearly two kilograms a month).

READ ALSO: Ask an Italian: How do you sauce pasta properly?

For context, people in neighbouring France and Germany only consume 8.3 and 7.9 kg per capita a year, whereas the average American eats about 9 kg every year.

Further, yearly per capita consumption in the UK stands at an average of just 3.5 kg, according to a report from pasta maker Barilla.

So, while they may not have it every day, Italians do eat quite a lot of pasta over the course of a year. 

But how do they never get tired of it? 

One of the main reasons behind Italians’ unbreakable bond with the high-carb food is variety. 

Italians are extremely creative when it comes to pasta and they rarely eat the same dish twice in a row as they like to experiment with a wide range of recipes and sauces.

READ ALSO: Ten golden rules for cooking pasta like an Italian

Further, there are over 350 types of pasta in Italy, which means that you could potentially eat a different pasta shape almost every day of the year.

Another reason why most Italians have pasta multiple times a week is that they tend to eat it in moderation, steering well clear of potential carb overloads. 

While they may have a large, high-calorie pasta dish (for instance, lasagne or pasta al ragù) on weekends or on special occasions, people in the country generally go for lighter recipes and sauces on normal days, with portions generally going from 80 to 120 grams per person.

Also, Italians very rarely eat pasta twice a day, with the majority of people having it for lunch and then opting for a non-carb-based dish in the evening.

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