Farewell to Mabel Bocchi, basketball and women's sports legend
She was 72 years old. She won eight championships with Geas Sesto San Giovanni and was voted best player in the world at the 1975 World Championships. She later became a journalist and fought for equal pay in sport
She was not only the greatest Italian basketball player of all times: Mabel Bocchi represented a model, of woman and athlete, an example for generations, past and future. Liliana 'Mabel' Bocchi, died, aged 72, struck down by a serious illness at her home in San Nicola Arcella, Calabria.
She wrote indelible pages in the history of Italian women's basketball between the 1970s and 1980s, then able to reinvent herself, a journalist both on television (at Domenica Sportiva) and in print (Corriere della Sera and Gazzetta dello Sport) with forays into politics and as a sports 'unionist'.
Star Career
Born in Parma on 26 May 1953, Mabel Bocchi's basketball career began in 1968 with Partenio Avellino, which she immediately dragged to promotion to Serie A. The following year she transferred to Geas Sesto San Giovanni where she wrote indelible pages. European club champion (the current Women Euroleague) with Geas Sesto San Giovanni in 1978, the first women's continental title by an Italian team in any sport, she then won eight championships in nine seasons with the Sesto San Giovanni team.
With the national team (113 appearances and 1058 points in total) she played three European Championships (third place in Cagliari in 1974) and a World Championship in 1975 in Colombia where Italy finished fourth with Bocchi as the tournament's top scorer and elected best player in the world. And in 2007 she was the first player to receive the Italy Basketball Hall of Fame, the highest honour in Italian basketball.
Her popularity and charm were such that she even received an offer from Playboy magazine to pose nude, a proposal she firmly declined. In the 1980s she also allowed herself a foray into the world of cinema, appearing alongside Renato Pozzetto and Adriano Celentano in the film 'Lui è peggio di me'.
