International meets have to be hosted somewhere. Rome had an Olympic stadium, so was a good a place as any. The nice thing is that when a country plays host, they make a special effort to send a competitive team. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Thou perhaps a little cartoonish, Italy did a good job with todays stamp. Showing 3 competitors in close competition was done well considering the close confines of a postage stamp. The clever thing is that the fellow on the stamp that looks most Italian is winning. Yet they did not go overboard with flags emblems to make it so obvious.
Todays stamp is issue A737, a 300 Lira stamp issued by Italy on September 4th, 1981. It was a single stamp issue celebrating the opening of the World Cup in Rome that day. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.
I mentioned that Italy made a special effort at the games and that yielded a sixth place fining in both the male and female portions of the games. The individual country that came in first for both males and males pretending they are females was East Germany. Just Kidding, but East Germany really won. More modern championships generally have the USA win the medal count with it’s majority African American team followed by several countries in Africa. The most recent I found had united Germany in ninth and Italy not on the list.
One interesting thing about the 1981 event in Rome was that teams from East, West and South showed. Remember the USA boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the Soviet Union skipped the 1984 Olympics, and Africa was just at the start of sending competitive teams. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/10/02/usa-olympic-stamp-1980-childhood-philatelist-dreams-of-getting-rich-from-the-boycot-dashed/. The East dominated in Rome.
One event the Italians medaled in was the hammer throw. The hammer is not a construction hammer but a 16 pound steel ball attached to a grip by a cable. The sport has recently opened to alleged women who throw a nine pound ball. Giampaulo Urlando won the Bronze for Italy. He later played/ was disqualified at the 1984 Olympics for being caught having injected testosterone. I would make a transsexual joke here but I have probably done enough of those in this article.
Well my drink is empty, just in time, and I have probably had enough. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.