Sound Theory :: La Calidad Since 2005

Friday 15th January 2010 - Comments (0) - Add A Comment
Heroes. Part 1 of X: Alberto Tomba.



An occasional series based on shady personal recollection rather than wikipedia.



I was sat on the tube yesterday thinking about the letter G, don't ask me why. I then thought about Super G and then Alberto Tomba, who was more of a slalom-er than a Super-G'er (although I could be wrong with that, such is the danger of flying without the google-backed safety net), but that's not the point. The point is, that back in the day, when Sundays where still legally a day of rest ie, pretty dull, BBC 2's Ski Sunday with David Vine, along with The Antique's Roadshow, Songs of Praise and Last of the Summer Wine, was pretty much staple viewing. Whereas the other three were key contributors to the sense of doom that surrounded a winter's Sunday evening, Ski Sunday was a little taste of exotic, with all its cowbells, “up-up-up-up-up”'s and well, just the sound of skis on snow.

Apart from the UK's Bell brothers, who normally finished in the low 40's (in a field of 50) the only name I can remember from this time was Tomba, who bossed the slalom like a latter day Schumacher or Armstrong. He was Italian and had curlyish hair and probably for those reasons alone reminded me of a ski-ing Roberto Baggio. Not a hero as such (and few of these will actually be that) but a random sporting figure who bossed his random field for a few years back when I was a youth.