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Francesco Cassardo (Turin, 25 September 1988) is an Italian high altitude climber and ex rugby player.

Biography
Born in Turin and residing in the city of Rivoli, from an early age he approached the mountain world thanks to his father's passion. He learned to ski at the age of four and participated in numerous competitions for the Rivoli Ski Club. During his adolescence he practiced various sports including swimming, basketball, football and handball, until, in the summer of 2002 he approached the world of rugby. He started playing in the youth of Rivoli Rugby until he made his debut in 2006 in the first team in the Serie C Championship. Following the merger of Rivoli Rugby with the amateur club of Airaca Rugby and the subsequent foundation of Taurinia Rugby, he moved to CUS Torino climbing category. He spent two years in Serie B, reaching promotion to Serie A in the 2012-2013 season.

In 2016 he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Turin and started working in 2017 at the Emergency Department of Pinerolo. In that period he began, also thanks to the farewell to rugby, to devote himself completely to mountaineering, starting to practice climbing on icefalls. In February 2018, during a climb, he met the mountaineer Carlo Alberto Cimenti; from that moment a friendship and a sporting collaboration were born between the two that led them to prepare an expedition to Pakistan with the aim of skiing for the first time the Laila Peak and then climbing the Gasherbrum II. Francesco only decided to try the GII by reaching his friend Cimenti together with the ultra-trailer Maurizio Basso. Due to the adverse weather conditions, the group was unable to complete the climb, stopping at 6000 m. Francesco decided to organize an expedition again, together with Cimenti, to climb the unclimbed peak of Gasherbrum VII the following year.

Gasherbrum VII
In the summer of 2019 Francesco decided to undertake the climb of Gaseherbrum VII, together with his friend Carlo Cimenti. The expedition to reach an altitude of 6955 m, thanks to the excellent weather conditions, proved to be less difficult than expected and after a few days the two climbers prepared to climb the summit. Francesco together with his companion, tried the enterprise to become the first climber to reach the top of the GVII. The weather conditions which continued to be favorable brought Cassardo very close to the summit. The degree of slope of the 60 ° climb and the numerous pitfalls of the mountain, however, did not allow to reach the top, stopping it only 100 m from it. Francesco Cassardo decided to go down and return to camp one, but during the descent he lost control of the skis and began to fall ruinously downstream for 450 m. After two days spent in the cold of the Pakistani mountain, thanks to his climbing partner and a group of climber to the rescue, Don Bowie and Denis Urubko were also present, he was taken to the camp, where the military helicopter was able to pick him up to help him. The climber was rushed to the Skardu military hospital, where he stayed for two days. Subsequently, he was transferred for another 2 days to the specialized hospital in Islamabad, where, however, the doctors were only concerned with keeping his condition stable. Back in Italy, at the "Umberto Parini" hospital in Aosta, he was subjected to specific treatments for a month by a team from the mountain medicine center of the Aosta Valley hospital. Following the accident, Francesco Cassardo reported the partial loss of the phalanges of the hands due to freezing, the rupture of several structures of the right knee and two vertebrae.