Deaths of Note: Italian cycling coach Alfredo Martini, astronaut Steven R. Nagel
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Version 0 of 1. Alfredo Martini, Italy’s former national cycling team coach who guided the squad to six world titles, died Aug. 25 at his home in Sesto Fiorentino, near Florence. He was 93. The Italian cycling federation announced his death but did not cite a specific cause. Under Mr. Martini’s guidance from 1975 to 1997, Italy won six gold, six silver and eight bronze medals at the road world championships. The titles were won by Francesco Moser (1977), Giuseppe Saronni (1982), Moreno Argentin (1986), Maurizio Fondriest (1988) and Gianni Bugno (1991 and 1992). Alfredo Martini was born Feb. 18, 1921, in the area of Florence. As a rider, he finished third in the 1950 Giro d’Italia. Since 1998, he was honorary president of the Italian federation. Steven R. Nagel, a former astronaut who flew on four space shuttle flights, died Aug. 21. He was 67. NASA announced the death. Ed Reinholtz, a longtime friend, said Mr. Nagel died in Columbia, Mo., and that he had cancer. Mr. Nagel was born Oct. 27, 1946, in Canton, Ill. He received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1969 and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from California State University in Fresno in 1978. Mr. Nagel was a test pilot for the Air Force before becoming an astronaut in 1979. NASA said he was a mission specialist during a June 1985 Discovery flight and the pilot aboard the Challenger in October 1985. He was commander on his last two missions — an Atlantis flight in April 1991 and a 10-day trip on Columbia in April 1993. Mr. Nagel later worked as deputy director and deputy chief in two separate offices at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. He retired from NASA in 2011. Valeri Petrov, Bulgaria’s most prominent contemporary poet, who translated the complete works of Shakespeare, died Aug. 27 at a hospital in Sofia. He was 94. The cause was a stroke, Mr. Petrov’s family said. Valeri Nissim Mevorah, better known by his pen-name, Valeri Petrov, was born in Sofia to a Jewish father and Bulgarian mother. Besides poems, novels and translations from Russian, Italian and English, Mr. Petrov authored numerous film scripts and plays — both for adults and children. During World War II he took part in the resistance against the pro-Nazi regime in Bulgaria and remained close to left-wing political thought through his life. In 1970, he clashed with the communist regime in Bulgaria after refusing to sign an official petition denouncing the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As a result, Mr. Petrov was not allowed to publish for years, so he turned to translating. — From news services and staff reports |