500 Lire World Athletic Championships

Rome hosted the inaugural IAAF World Athletics Championships in 1983, but this 1987 issue commemorates the second edition, held in Rome again — an unusual back-to-back hosting arrangement driven largely by Italian organizational lobbying within the IAAF. The Italian mint issued this piece as part of a broader commemorative program that accompanied the games held at the Stadio Olimpico that August, where Ben Johnson's 100m world record would later be stripped following his 1988 Seoul doping conviction.