"Magnificenze!" the slender, dark-haired Italian threw out his hands in an all-expressive gesture. It was Luigi Beccali, Olympic champion in the 1500 meters, who was speaking to an inquisitive audience of Boston newspapermen in the smoke-filled track room at Dillon Field House.

A moment later his quick laughter burst out again as the interpreter asked him how he liked this cold New England weather. "I am hoping for this Indian summer I have heard about," the interpreter translated. Most diplomatically the 1500-meter ace said that the Stadium track was "very good," and that Harvard was magnificent.

Beccali and his teammate, Umberto Cerati, 3000-meter start, were the head-line members of the Italian track team that began practice in the Stadium yesterday in preparation for Friday's international meet. Having the two at a disadvantage, the reporters were pumping them via the medium of Peter M. Riccio, a Columbia professor, acting as interpreter. The questions varied from a request to have Beccali name the greatest runner he had ever seen to a demand for Cerati's opinion of Joe McCluskey, the Fordham star, who is Cerati's strongest rival.

LaDoumergue, the great Frenchman, was the finest runner he had ever faced, Beccali opinioned. "I was way in the rear," the Italian said good-naturedly. About McCluskey, Beccali's teammate had no such feelings of inferiority. "He is a very excellent competitor," the Milanese asserted, "but I think I can beat him."

Then appeared the inevitable question, "What do you think of American women?" Beccali blushed, and embarrassedly refused to answer. But the journalists pushed the point, and Beccali suddenly grinned and blurted out, "The women have their place in Italy and we put them there." Then he subsided and displayed an example of an Italian sunset, only breaking his silence to say briefly that, yes, the Italian women use lipstick and makeup, too.

It was the reporters turn for diplomacy, so the conversation was switched to Il Duce, apparently a safe subject with any Italian. Il Duce, according to Beccali and Cerati, has put athletics on a par with studies and gives medals to all athletes who win distinction abroad. Until recently, it seems, there wasn't much competition for runners in Italy, but Beccali has been running in competition since 1926. Both Beccali and Cerati are university students, the former specializing in architecture, the latter in commercial science.