May 4, 2024 is a special date. Like every year, many Turin residents remember the tragedy that at 5.03pm on 4 May 1949 took away the entire Grande Torino team, a team that had managed to bring home five championships in a row from 1942 to 1949. The plane on which the players, technical staff and journalists were flying, 31 people in all, crashed at 5.03pm on the Superga hill just behind the great Basilica.
The Basilica of Superga in Turin
The climb up the Superga hill, early in the morning, every 4th May has a special flavour. We are witnessing a sort of pilgrimage of women and men adorned with grenades, some with a scarf, some with a flag: they are all going to pay homage to the invincibles, who crashed their plane on May 4, 1949, while returning from a friendly match played in Lisbon.
Urbano Cairo, on this day, jumps from one part of the city to another. Fanpage.it met him at the Monumental Cemetery of Turin, where Don Riccardo Robella is celebrating a moment of prayer in tribute to the players and managers who are buried in the large cemetery north of Turin.
Urbano Cairo, president of Torino
“The fact that we still remember them after 75 years – says the President of Torino Urbano Cairo – it really means that they have left an incredible mark, an indelible mark”.
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“It’s a very important thing, because they have become a myth for everyone – Urbano Cairo continues his story, before visiting the niches in the basement – it is a heartfelt moment for all of us in Toro. But not only for us, because this tragedy then had a unique, incredible sequel. Millions of people went to the funeral. There was a moment of great, great general emotion throughout the countrybecause in those years, after the war, we had emerged defeated as a country and Grande Torino had also given hope for rebirth, for growth”.
Don Riccardo Robella, Chaplain of Toro
“It is a very heartfelt and very important moment – explains Don Riccardo Robella, chaplain of Toro – every year the tragedy is remembered and I must say that the interesting thing is that the more time passes the more this memory grows rather than diminishesas happens in many cases, in this case it is growing.”
One of the many messages left by Toro fans
As usual, the days preceding May 4th included a series of events organized with Torino Calcio by groups of fans and associations, which involved fans at all levels. From training sessions with open doors to the inaugurations of playing fields, up to the most intense moment, that of mass in memory of the fallen of the Grande Torino tragedy which takes place at the Basilica of Superga. Here, at 5.03pm, the time of the tragedy, the Torino captain reads the names of the 31 fallen and wreaths of flowers are placed under the plaque located at the back of the Basilica.
The Basilica of Superga
“You don’t joke with death, you don’t joke with tears – these are the words of Don Riccardo Robella – and the pain that Taurus people feel is always the same. It is not simply rhetoric, but it is something that can still be felt in the flesh. This is a sign of respect for what happened, but above all for what that team represented in those years.”
