In the '60 years, the Italian middle distances practically didn't exist. So, the Italian Federation (FIDAL) for the first time organized some camp abroad with agreements with French and Polish Federations, for middle distances, sending young coaches for learning.
In France the coach of Michel Jazy was Renè Frassinelli, of Italian origin. A small group of young coaches went Saint Maur for 3 times remaining every time about 2 weeks for learning from Frassinelli the principles of training.
Frassinelli used a system combinig the training phylosophy of Ernst Van Aaken, German doctor who had the theory of "pure endurance" (he was the coach of Haraldo Norpoth), or Peter Snell and his marathon training and, approaching the races, the long interval training of Mihail Igloi (he didn't believe in the classic interval training of Gerschler).
In those meetings I, very young coach, had the opportunity to meet the two Michel (Jazy and Bernard) very much stronger than the Italians, and I found persons of great humanity very humble, and open to explain their experiences.
For that reason,, we can say that Jazy and Frassinelli had an important role in building the great season of the Italian middle distances that from 1985 and 1995, was the best in Europe and one of the best in the world, winning World Championships in steeple (Panetta 1987), in 10000m (Cova 1983), in HM (Baldini 1996), winning Olympics in 10000m (Cova 1984) and Marathon (Bordin 1988 and Baldini 2004), European Championships in 10000m (Cova 1982, Mei 1986 and Antibo 1990), in 5000m (Antibo 1990) and Marathon (Bordin 1986 and 1990, Baldini 1998, 2002 and 2006) and steeple in 1990 (Panetta) and 1994 (Lambruschini), plus a lot of silver and bronze medals.
RIP my old friend.