A well-built Italian road racing cyclist, Ferruccio Manza won the 1963 Italian Road Race Championship. The following year he won the Lombardy regional championship and was also called up to the national squad. At the 1964 World Road Race Championship at Albertville, he was on the winning 100 km time trial team ahead of Spain and Belgium. A month later, on a cold and rainy day in Tokyo, the same quartet of Manza, Severino Andreoli, Luciano Dalla Bona and was surprisingly beaten by the Dutch team in the Olympic final. Manza turned professional in 1966 and, despite his many successes as an amateur, never managed to replicate them on the professional scene. He received in 2020 the Gold Collar for Sporting Merit from the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI).
