FAMOUS & FEARED
Few racers have had as many nicknames as Omobono Tenni. He was variously known by his fans with a Rossi-like mania as the red meteor, black devil, king of curves, the fire-winged centaur and the master from Treviso. And those were just a few…
Tenni’s aggressive, daredevil style, along with numerous wins in Italy and abroad made him both famous and feared. He was a man who could find the frighteningly fast limits of a motorcycle, yet in person he was very shy. He didn’t like posing for photographs and his post-race interviews were painfully short.
No public relations machine, he had three standard phrases: “I won,” “I fell,” or “read it in the newspapers.” He just wanted to go racing – and to win.
This was an era of rising speeds on public roads, racing with poor tyres, sometimes on roads that had changed little since they had been built by the Romans. Cobblestone, clinker and semi-hardened clay surfaces were commonplace. In the mountains, particularly in the Italian Alps, roads were often only half-paved and guardrails only placed at the higher
