Playboy showman who won three Olympic golds
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| Alberto Tomba (right) pictured with the legendary Austrian skier Franz Klammer |
Italy’s greatest alpine ski racer, Alberto Tomba, was born
on this day in 1966 in San Lazzaro di Savena, a town in Emilia-Romagna that now
forms part of the metropolitan city of Bologna.
Tomba – popularly known as ‘Tomba la Bomba’ – won three
Olympic gold medals, two World Championships and won no fewer than nine titles in
thirteen World Cup seasons, between 1986 and 1998.
The only other Italian Alpine skiers with comparable records
are Gustav Thoni, who won two Olympic golds and four World Championships in the
1970s, and Deborah Compagnoni, who won three golds at both the Olympics and the
World Championships between 1992 and 1998.
Thoni would later be a member of Tomba’s coaching team.
Tomba had showmanship to match his talent on the slopes. Always
eager to seek out the most chic nightclubs wherever he was competing, he would
drive around the centre of Bologna in an open-topped Ferrari, flaunting both
his wealth and his fame.
At his peak, he would arrive with his entourage in the exclusive
ski resort at Aspen, Colorado to hold open house at his rented chalet on
Buttermilk Mountain, with the rich and famous desperate to be invited.
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| At his peak, Tomba cultivated a glamorous image |
Never short of confidence when it came to the opposite sex, Tomba
once famously asked the German skater Katarina Witt for a date just as she was
coming off the ice as an Olympic champion at the Winter Games in Calgary in
1988 and partied the night away with the winner of a Miss Italia competition in
which he was one of the judges.
He never let his appetite for a full social life take away
his competitive edge, however. Much as
he was captivated with the glamorous Witt, he took the gold medals in both the
slalom and the giant slalom at the same Games.
Tomba’s love for skiing came from his father, Franco, a
successful businessman in the textiles industry. Bologna is a long way from the
Alps, the background from which most skiing champions emerge, but Monte Cimone,
the highest peak in the Apennines, was not too far away and Franco thought
nothing of driving from their home to the slopes at Sestola, even though it
could take two and half hours each way.
He would often take Alberto and his older brother Marco along
with him and Alberto was a proficient skier from the age of three and competing by the
time he was seven. He took part in the
Junior World Championships at the age of 17 and made his World Cup debut in
1985, three days before his 19th birthday.
Early in 1987 he won his first medal – bronze in the giant
slalom – at the World Championships in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and in
November of the same year scored the first of his 50 World Cup race wins, in
the slalom, and two days later the second, defeating his idol, Ingemar Stenmark,
in the giant slalom.
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| Tomba's double Olympic gold at the 1988 Winter Games was commemorated on a postage stamp in Paraguay |
After a relatively lean couple of years, he returned to form
to win his second World Championship giant slalom title in 1991 and in 1992 was
almost unstoppable, clocking up nine World Cup wins to take the slalom and giant
slalom titles, and winning his third Olympic gold, in the slalom, at the
Albertville Games in France.
He was overall World Cup champion for the only time in his
career in 1995, amassing 11 individual race wins, and in 1996 won double World
Championship gold, taking the slalom and the giant slalom at Sierra Nevada in
Spain.
Tomba retired at the end of the 1998 season, but not before notching
the last of his 50 World Cup race wins at in the season finale at Crans-Montana,
in doing so becoming the only male alpine skier to have won at least one World
Cup race per year for 11 consecutive seasons.
In part, it was the constant attention that came with fame
that caused him to quit at the age of 31.
On one occasion, his temper got the better of him and he threw his winner’s
trophy at a photographer he had spotted from the podium, who he knew was responsible
for picture of him naked in a sauna.
He had also broken up with his girlfriend, former Miss Italy
Martina Colombari, because she found photographers and journalists were too
intrusive. He admitted too that, having
won everything in his disciplines, the urge to compete was not quite as sharp
as before.
Nowadays, Tomba lives his life at a slower pace, insisting
he prefers a stimulating conversation over dinner and to drink wine with friends
rather than to stay out until the early hours. He has never married and says any future
bride would have to cook tagliatelle Bolognese as well as his mother.
He still skis, but not in places such as Sestriere in Italy,
where he would still be recognised even in goggles and with a ski hat pulled down
over his head. Instead, he heads for Idaho
or New Mexico.
At other times, he devotes his energy to the Laureus World
Sports Academy and Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, working to spread the positive
influence of sport and to help young people learn respect, discipline and
loyalty, to stay away from drugs, crime and hate and, through sport, to experience
how people from different countries, of different colour or social class can be
equals.
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| Unusual rock formations abound in the chalky landscape around San Lazzaro di Savena |
Travel tip:
The town of San Lazzaro di Savena, where Tomba grew up –
specifically in the Castel de Britti area – has grown from the one-time site of
a leprosy isolation unit to a thriving municipal area of greater Bologna, its
population having risen to more than 32,000 through industrial development and
its expansion as a housing area for Bologna. Situated only 6km (3.6 miles) from the centre
of Bologna along the Via Appia, it is not far from the popular caving area of
the Parco deo Gessi Bolognesi e Calanchi dell’Abbadessa.
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| A typically wintry scene in Sestriere |
Travel tip:
Sestriere, a village completely surrounded by mountains on
the pass that links Val Chisone and Val Susa to the west of Turin and close to
the French border, was developed as a ski resort in 1930s by Giovanni Agnelli,
the FIAT founder. It has a number of hotels and ski lodges, including two landmark
tower-block hotels that were the first buildings of the Agnelli development.
The ski slopes, of which there are 146 accessible from the village, were one of
the main venues in the 2006 Winter Olympics, have twice hosted the skiing World
Championships and regular stage World Cup events. In the winter months, the population of the
area soars from less than 1,000 to more than 20,000.