Mauro Prosperi (born 13 July 1955) is a former Italian police officer and pentathlete, most notable for his nine-day disappearance and survival in the Sahara Desert, whilst competing in the 1994 Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands) in Morocco. Early life Prosperi was born in the Italian capital city of Rome on 13 July 1955. One year prior to graduating from his secondary school, a liceo artistico (an Italian secondary school focused on the study of art subjects) in 1974, Prosperi began working for the Polizia di Stato (the national police force of Italy) as a crowd-control police officer. Prosperi met his wife Cinzia Pagliara at a pre-Olympic pentathlon event, where Pagliara was working as an English- and Russian-language interpreter. In an interview with Netflix in 2019, Pagliara noted that she admired Prosperi's positivity and enthusiasm towards overcoming challenges and obstacles at the event. Within six months, the pair had married and now have three children together. However, in a 2014 interview with BBC News, Prosperi noted that his marriage with Pagliara had ended, largely due to the nature of his lifestyle. Marathon des Sables and disappearance Prosperi was first informed of the Marathon Des Sables by a friend of seven years and fellow running enthusiast Giovanni Manzo, who entertained the idea that they compete in the 251-kilometer (156 mi) long race together. Keen to challenge himself and drawn towards a new environment of the Sahara Desert, Prosperi began preparing by running 40 kilometers daily and reducing his drinking water intake in aims to acclimatise his body to the feeling of dehydration. His wife, although never preventing Prosperi from competing, expressed her concerns, due to the extreme nature of the event. Starting in Foum Zguid, Morocco on 10 April 1994, 39-year-old Prosperi set off with Manzo, amongst eighty other runners, to compete in the ultramarathon, his first desert event. During the first three days of the marathon, Prosperi and Manzo covered of terrain composed of salt beds, rock surfaces and sand dunes. All competitors began running together in the morning, yet due to the small number of participants and differing paces of each individual, each person was running almost entirely alone. Abiding to race regulations, Prosperi navigated the desert in a self-contained fashion, carrying his own supplies of food, clothing, sleeping bag, compass, portable stove and emergency kit with a signal flare within his backpack, whereas water was supplied