Rubini started to play
basketball for his high school team, in his native
Trieste, where he graduated in 1941. The same year, he began to play for
Olimpia Milano's junior clubs, the most prestigious
Italian League basketball
club at that time. However, he had a long-lived passion for
water polo: this led him to later become one of the rare world sportsmen to compete at the highest level in two different team sports.
Water polo career As a club
player-coach, Rubini won 6
Italian national domestic league titles in water polo (1947, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1955) with Società Canottieri Olona, Rari Nantes Napoli, and Rari Nantes Camogli. He also totaled 84
caps, for the senior
Italian water polo national team, 42 of which were as a team
captain. He won a gold medal at the 1947
European Water Polo Championship, with the senior Italian national water polo team. In the meantime, he had also assumed the role of player-coach of the Italian basketball club
Olimpia Milano, in 1948; and he was called by the national teams of both sports (basketball and water polo) to play with them. Rubini chose water polo, and he won a gold medal in the sport, at the
1948 Summer Olympic Games, in
London, beating the
Hungary in the final. With Rubini as a full-time player, Italy could boast what was to be called the "Golden Settebello", one of the most valuable water polo teams ever, which also won a bronze medal at the
1952 Summer Olympics, and at the
Turin European Championship of
1954. In both the events, Italy was behind traditional rivals of
Yugoslavia and
Hungary.
Basketball career As a club basketball
player-coach, Rubini won 6
Italian national domestic league titles (1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1957) with
Olimpia Milano. In 1957, he devoted himself only to the team's
head coach role, and he then went on to win 9 more Italian national domestic league titles with Olimpia (1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1972). In those years, he set an unparalleled record of 322 victories, and 28 defeats. Overall, as head coach of the Milan team, Rubini totaled 501 victories, including the
FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) championship in 1966, and two (
European 2nd-tier) level
FIBA European Cup Winners' Cups (FIBA Saporta Cup) titles, in 1971 and 1972: these were the first European-wide victories of Italian basketball clubs. He also won the
Italian Cup, in 1972. As a player, Rubini won a silver medal with the senior
Italian national basketball team, at the
1946 FIBA EuroBasket, which was held in
Geneva. Later, as the delegation head of the senior Italian national basketball team, Rubini also took part in the first international victories of Italy: these include the silver medal at the
1980 Summer Olympic Games. At the
FIBA EuroBasket, Italy finished first at the
1983 FIBA EuroBasket, in
Nantes, finished third at the
1985 FIBA EuroBasket, in
Stuttgart, and finished second at the
1991 FIBA EuroBasket, in
Rome. ==Death==