Despite 50 years difference in their ages, Sergio Bianchini and his son Marco present a good Father’s Day model of love and respect.
Both regularly run in area races, among other shared activities. And the fact the 69-year-old Sergio usually leaves his teenage son behind isn’t a point of shame for Marco. Sergio leaves almost everybody behind.
In the 10-kilometer main race of the BlueCross Riverbend Run on Saturday, for instance, only 22 of the 516 finishers got done before the East Ridge resident who didn’t start running competitively until he was 60. The elder Bianchini won the 65-69 age group by nearly 17 minutes with a finish of 43 minutes, 59.82 seconds.
Marco finished in 47:43.67.
“He’s an inspiration,” the nutrition major at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga said of his father. “I admired my dad for everything before, and I thought if he was running I should run, too.”
Sergio, a native of Italy who served as a military paratrooper there for two years, came to the Bahamas in his mid-20s to work in the hotel industry. He worked five years there and another five in Bermuda before being brought to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville.
He went from there to a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio, as an assistant manager and was moved to the Holiday Inn in East Ridge a few years later. After retiring from the hotel business, he became a restaurateur and convenience store operator. He is fully retired now after selling two stores last year, he said.
He has maintained a lean, wiry body with hard work — “I never missed one day of work in my life,” he said — and a variety of physical activities through the years. While living in the Caribbean, he enjoyed swimming, snorkeling, scuba diving and spear-fishing.
Married at 49, Sergio was in his native Italy a year later when Marco was conceived.
One day nearly a decade ago, he just happened to be out for a run when he met Tommy Nichols of Rock Spring, Ga., who told him about the Chattanooga Track Club and encouraged him to get involved competitively in the sport.
Sergio gave it a try and quickly showed proficiency.
“I tell Tommy it’s all because of him,” he said.
The 55-year-old Nichols, incidentally, finished 50th overall in Saturday’s 10k.