Italian NOC Leader Sets Course for Future - On the Scene

(ATR)Italian sport leaders and Olympians were among guests at 60th anniversary celebrations of the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics in the storied ski resort.

CONI president Giovanni Malago and the Italian Olympic Committee executive board met at the Cortina Municipio on Tuesday, 60 years to the day since the Games opened. The meeting followed two days of women’s World Cup ski races and a gala dinner celebration in the glamorous Italian Dolomites resort.

Topics discussed included Cortina’s bid for the 2021 Alpine ski world championships, Rome’s 2024 Olympic bid, the Lillehammer Youth Olympics and preparations for the 2021 Ryder Cup, the first time for Italy.

"These are very special days for sport in Italy, especially here in Cortina," Malago said. "The Italian Olympic Committee has a tough job preparing for the future of sport in Italy, but at the same time we want to support what was the history of our sports."

Malago emphasized the significance of a visit last week to Lausanne, in which he was accompanied by Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and Rome 2024 chairman Luca di Montezemolo, for a meeting with IOC president Thomas Bach.

"What was important was that the government very clearly, very strongly and with a huge commitment declared once again to be totally close with the Italian Olympic Committee and Rome 2024 for supporting the candidature," Malago told ATR.

"Mr. Renzi has a very strong passion for sport – he is a crazy supporter of practically all disciplines inside the Olympic Games," Malago said.

The Rome 2024 bid team also presented the IOC with results of a recent poll showing that more than 75 percent of Italians were in favor of the Olympic ambition. A total of 2,200 Roman and Italian citizens were surveyed.

Malago also noted that final touches are being put on Rome’s first candidature book, due with the IOC by Feb. 17. The three-stage bid race calls on Rome and its rivals Budapest, Los Angeles and Paris to deliver three bid submissions."We are finishing the last considerations, the last details of the dossier," Malago said.

"Before Renzi met with Bach, we spent three full days for specific meetings with the international federations just to find the best solutions for finding where will be the best place logistically for the venues.A strong characteristic of the dossier that we will just have three clusters and all venues will be concentrated inside these three clusters," headded."We want to remember our history, but a with a new concept of the Olympics – for example, the marathon will finish right in front of the Colosseum under the Arch of Tito."

Cortina Anniversary Gala Dinner

Olympians from the 1956 Games were honored at a dinner held at the renowned Cortina Ski Club 18 on Monday night.Malago was master of ceremonies on a memorable evening in an intimate setting celebrating the history of the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics.

"It was ten years after the war and the name was the ‘Italian Miracle,’" Italian IOC member Mario Pescante told ATR of Cortina’s nicknane. "The economy was bad, the parliament and whole country was against it, but our [CONI] president Giulio Onesti said we must try in Cortina.

"People around the world were saying ‘Italian fascists’, but we wanted to demonstrate another democratic country," he said.

Guido Caroli, the final torchbearer at the opening ceremony sixty years ago, attended the dinner.Caroli, Italian IOC members and others discussed the incident in which the Italian speedskater fell to the ice, skating with the Olympic flame after being tripped up by a microphone cable. He prevented the flame from going out and proceeded to light the cauldron soon afterwards.

"My fall was due to a cable," Caroli told reporters at the dinner. "After the final test, the organizers guaranteed me that it would be taken on the day of the opening ceremony.When I entered in the stadium, I was staring at the audience and did not look down, but the cable was still there and I slipped," Caroli said. "They told me that they could not remove it because it was frozen."

Carlo Calza, another speedskater who raced in 1956, was a big hit at the party showing old photos and recounting stories of competing in temperatures of 30 below Celsius on Lake Di Misurina. A historic video was shown including black and white images of the opening ceremony at the Cortina Olympic Ice Stadium, including IOC president Avery Brundage’s address in Italian.

Athletes were seen competing on Cortina’s ice and slopes, in addition to workers lugging cameras up the mountain as the 1956 Games were the first seen by a global audience.

Reported in Cortina by Brian Pinelli

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