Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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those authors whose ideals furthered the progress of communism. Eventually, however,

under constant political pressure from the party and from other opponents of his project,

Vittorini terminated the weekly’s publication in 1947.

In the following two years, Vittorini published his last complete novels, Il Sempione

strizza l’occhio al Frejus (translated as The Twilight of the Elephant) (1947) and Le

donne di Messina (Women of Messina), before concentrating his attention on editorial

work and family matters (in 1950 he was divorced from Rosa, and five years later his son

Giulio died). Between 1942 and the time of his death, Vittorini edited a number of

literary series for Bompiani, Einaudi and Mondadori, through which he actively made

available and promoted the work of both great foreign authors and new Italian writers.

His strong support for new writing was indefatigable although spectacularly, as editor for

Einaudi, he made the mistake of rejecting Tommasi di Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (The

Leopard) in 1958, a work that was soon picked up by rival publisher Feltrinelli, and has

since become an Italian classic.

In 1957, Vittorini published Diario in pubblico (Public Diary), the first of two

important collections of essays that document the difficult relationship between the

writer’s literary world and the ever-changing political and cultural reality of postwar

Italy. The second volume, Le due tensioni (The Two Tensions), brings together and

expands on the articles Vittorini wrote for il menabò di letteratura (The Literary Printer’s

Proof), which he co-directed with Italo Galvino and in which he discussed the often

difficult rapport between the literary and the industrial world in Italian society Diagnosed

with an incurable illness in 1963, Vittorini continued to work until the time of his death

in 1966.

Further reading

De Nicola, F. (1993) Introduzione a Vittorini (Introduction to Vittorini), Rome: Laterza (a broad

analysis of Vittorini’s work that includes a complete bibliography).

Lupetti, F. (1975) La polemica Vittorini-Togliatti e la linea culturale del PCI nel 1945–1947 (The

Polemic between Togliatti and Vittorini and the cultural direction of the PCI between 1945–

1947), Milan: Lavoro liberate (an in-depth look at the public debate between the two men in the

pages of Il Politecnico).

Potter, J. (1979) Elio Vittorini, Boston: Twayne Publishers (a general introduction, in English, to

the life and works of the Sicilian author).

VALERIO FERME

volleyball

Italy is home to one of the most competitive volleyball leagues in the world, as was

proven by the men’s national team dominance in the last decades of the twentieth

century, which includes victories in the World League in 1990–2, 1994–5, 1997 and

1999. Before the expansion of professional beach volleyball in North America, Italy was

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also the favourite destination for many top US players, who lacked a professional outlet

after their college careers, and for players from countries such as Brazil who were

attracted by better contracts. Professional volleyball teams are divided into Serie A1 (first

division) and Serie A2 (second division). A system of playoffs determines not only the

national champion but also the teams which move from A1 to A2 and vice versa. As is

the case for basketball, the name of the sponsor becomes the official name of the team

and this can change from one season to the next, thus creating some confusion for the less

than dedicated fan.

PAOLO VILLA

Volonté, Gian Maria

b. 9 April 1933, Milan; d. 6 December 1994, Florina, Greece

Actor

Graduating from Rome’s Accademia d’arte drammatica in 1957, Volonté started in

theatre and never gave up the stage completely, in spite of his extraordinary range of

involvement in the cinema. In 1962 he landed his first starring role in Un uomo da

bruciare (A Man for the Killing), directed by the Taviani brothers and throughout the

1960s he became a familiar figure in spaghetti westerns, both under his real name and

under the pseudonym of John Welles. However, his most productive years were the

1970s, during which Volonté committed himself to Italy’s cinema engage, collaborating

with all the major political film-makers such as Giuliano Montaldo (Sacco e Vanzetti,

1971), Francesco Rosi (Il caso Mattei (The Mattei Case), 1972, and Lucky Luciano,

1973) and above all Elio Petri (from the Oscar-winning Indagine su un cittadino al di

sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion), 1969, to Todo Modo

(One Way or Another), 1976). After almost a decade of ‘exile’ in France in the 1980s,

marked by awards both at Cannes and at Venice, Volonté returned to Italy to join the

New Italian Cinema and work with the younger generation of political film-makers, in

particular with Gianni Amelio (Porte aperte (Open Doors), 1991). Volonté died of a

heart attack in 1994 while filming Theo Angelopoulos’s Ulysses’ Gaze in the Balkans.

DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL.

Volponi, Paolo

b. 6 February 1924, Urbino; d. 23 August 1994, Ancona

Lawyer, poet and novelist

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While pursuing a managerial career in such firms as Olivetti and Fiat, Volponi fostered

his interest in literature and published both poetry and narrative. In early novels such as

Memoriale (My Troubles Began) (1962) and La macchina mondiale (The Worldwide

Machine) (1962), Volponi represented the difficult process of the individual’s social and

cultural integration into the newly born industrial society, resulting in alienation and self-

destruction. Volponi’s linguistic and stylistic invention, owing much to the expressionism

of Carlo Emilio Gadda, registers a dysfunctional social reality and its violence upon the

individual, despite any attempt to adhere to nature. From the grotesque and parodic

treatment of historical events in Il sipario ducale (Last Act in Urbino) (1975) to the

apocalyptic representation of a final explosion in Il pianeta irritabile (The Irritable

Planet) (1978), Volponi lucidly dissected the ills of Italian postwar society while

powerfully constructing a visionary fictional world.

Further reading

Papini, M.C. (1997) Paolo Volponi: il potere, la storia, il linguaggio (Paolo Volponi: Power,

History, Language), Florence: Le Lettere.

FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI

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Wertmüller, Lina

b. 14 August 1928, Rome

Director and scriptwriter

‘I feel stronger when I stick to the popular side’ said Lina Wertmüller who has been

described as an aristocratic but moderate anarchist (her full name is Arcangela Felice

Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spanol von Braueich). It was largely due to her passion for

popular culture that in the 1970s she gained an unexpected international success by

writing and directing a series of grotesque social satires, one of which, Pasqualino

settebellezze (Seven Beauties) (1975)—a story about a prisoner in the concentration

camps during the Second World War—received four Oscar nominations.

Wertmüller graduated from Pietro Sharoff’s Theatrical Academy, and for the next ten

years she worked in theatre, radio and television, writing scripts for comedians Garinei

and Giovannini, producing puppet shows and directing the famous musical television

show Canzonissima for RAI. During a holiday in the region of Puglia, she conceived her

first film as a way of showing life in some areas of southern Italy Back in Rome she

became assistant director to Federico Fellini and in 1963, with Fellini’s crew, she shot I

basilischi (The Lizards). The film was critically well received but did poorly at the box

office. Wertmüller returned to more popular entertainment with Questa volta parliamo di

uomini (This Time We Talk About Men) (1965), an open rejoinder to Scola’s previous Se

permettete parliamo di donne (With Permission, Let’s Talk About Women) (1964). This

was followed by Rita la zanzara (Rita the Mosquito) (1966) and Non stuzzicate la

zanzara (Don’t Tease the Mosquito) (1967), two musicals starring Italian pop singer Rita

Pavone but directed under the pseudonym of George H. Brown. Returning to the theatre,

she met the sculptor Enrico Job, who became her husband and the set designer for many

of her films.

In 1972, she directed Mimi Metallurgico ferito nell’onore (The Seduction of Mimì), a

love story between Fiore, a beautifully emancipated Milanese Trotskyist, and Mimì, a

Sicilian blue-collar worker. The film is set within the exciting atmosphere of the 1968

student protest permeated by political idealism and free love; however Mimì eventually

allows himself to fall into the clutches of the mafia and so Fiore leaves him. The

overwhelming success of this feisty tragicomedy allowed her to shoot a film every year

with her favourite actors, Mariangela Melato as the northern Italian liberated woman and

Giancarlo Giannini as the deeply conservative southern man: Film d’amore e d’anarchia

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(Love and Anarchy) (1973), Tutto a posto niente in or dine (All Screwed Up) (1974),

Travolti da un insolito destino (Swept Away) (1974–5).

During the 1980s, her films moved to deal with even more complex social themes

such as kidnapping, drug addiction, organized crime and AIDS. She also continued

working in theatre and, amongst other things, directed the opera Carmen for the San

Carlo Theatre in Naples. Naples became for a while her favourite setting, where she

filmed the very moving Sabato domenica e lunedì (Saturday, Sunday and Monday)

(1990), adapted from a play by Eduardo De Filippo and starring Sophia Loren. In 1988

she was appointed Commissario Straordinario (Independent Commissioner) for the

Centre Sperimentale di Cinematografia.

In the 1990s she found other targets for her strong popular satire with Io speriamo che

me la cavo (Ciao, Professor) (1992), a story about a northern teacher, played by Paolo

Villaggio, sent to Naples to teach to a bunch of streetwise kids, and Meccanico e

parrucchiera in un turbine di sesso e politica (Mechanic and Hairdresser in a Tornado of

Sex and Politics) where she ridicules the Lega Nord (Northern League) and the parties of

the new left, RC (Rifondazione Comunista) and PDS (Partito democratico della

sinistra).

Further reading

Bondanella, P. (1983) Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, New York: Ungar (on

Wertmüller, see ch. 10, ‘The Contemporary Scene and New Italian Comedy’).

Marcus, M. (1986) Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press (see ch. 14, ‘Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy: The High Price of Commitment’).

Michalczyk, J. (1986) The Italian Political Filmmakers, London and Toronto: Associated

University Presses (see ch. 7, ‘Lina Wertmüller: The Politics of Sexuality’).

ADRIANA MONTI

wine

The function of wine in Italian culture is extremely complex, for wine is simultaneously a

dietary staple, an important commodity and an aesthetic philosophy. Consequently, an

account of Italian wine needs to weave together three competing narratives: wine for the

people, wine for the palate and wine for the market.

The first narrative concerns the historic wine culture of Italy or wine as a dietary

staple. As the old saying, ‘bread, wine and olives’, suggests, wine has historically been

regarded as food. Thus wine is grown both as an economic crop and an agricultural

necessity throughout Italy, from northern Piedmont to the southern islands of Sardinia

and Sicily. Although the majority of wine today is sold through wine stores, rural families

still have demijohns of regional wines delivered to their homes. Likewise, urban dwellers

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still drive to rural co-operatives (cantine) to purchase demijohns that they bottle

themselves upon return to the city.

Since, historically, wine drinking has been widespread through all classes of the

population, it has created the custom of drinking wine from one’s own region and even

the advent of enoteche (specialized stores that sell wines from elsewhere in Italy and

Europe) has not really changed this practice. Although the custom ultimately derives

from the lack of navigable rivers and the historic difficulty of travel between provinces, it

continues today as an established part of a cultural system in which, for example, dishes

of one region are usually paired only with the wines from that region.

Furthermore, since regional wines are produced by farmers and small producers

usually for local and personal consumption, wines are made in and for the immediate area

and some wines are thus virtually unknown outside their DOCs (accredited areas of

origin). Because of the low yields, these wines are frequently sold before they are even

bottled. Customarily, families in the region negotiate to buy these wines in twenty-five to

fifty-litre increments, or enough wine to drink over the year. Throughout the 1960s these

wines could still be found in unlabelled bottles; however, subsequent DOC legislation has

done much to eliminate this practice.

With grapes grown and wine made throughout the peninsula, some experts estimate

that Italy produces over 3,800 wines, an achievement which makes Italy the most diverse

wine producer in the world. However, only a portion of these wines have actually been

successfully exported to the Anglo-American world. From 1945 through to the 1960s,

Italy’s exports consisted mainly of bulk wines for blending and the straw-basketed flasks

of chianti popular in Italian restaurants. This popular chianti, moreover, has little to do

with the DOC-classified chianti of Classico, Colli Senesi, Colline Pisane, Ruffina, Colli

Fiorentini, Aretini, and Montalbano. In fact, the exported chianti has created a cultural

identity of wine for the market which is at odds with the actual wine produced in the

Chianti region. Thus, as chianti has become the classic accompaniment to pizza and

spaghetti, it also has become a cultural icon for the Anglo-American world’s imagination

of Italian culture.

The successful marketing of chianti proves, however, that wine for the market—and

here we move to the second competing narrative in Italian wine-making—has been an

important concern since the 1970s. Eager to transform wine into a commodity and to

elevate Italy’s status in the Common Market, exporters began to target the United States.

With the popular eclipse of chiantis, exporters were forced to imagine new forms of wine

which could be uniformly produced in mass quantities and marketed abroad. During the

1970s, wines like lambrusco from Emilia-Romagna and soave from the Veneto displaced

the once entrenched chianti as the most popular exported Italian wine.

Lambrusco, perhaps, has done the most damage qualitatively and the most good

quantitatively in establishing wine as a viable commodity. The wine’s export success has

been largely due to its lack of all specifiable attributes associated with the varietal. It’s

blandness encouraged the notion that good wine should not divert attention away from

food. In its heyday, lambrusco even came in colourless and non-alcoholic versions to

satisfy what Italians imagined as the American palate, a palate which only tolerated a

softer, rounder, sweeter and lighter wine.

The export success of lambrusco led many Italian winemakers to see it as the ‘magic

liquid’ of Italy’s international economic resurgence, but lambrusco also changed the way

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Italians themselves perceived wine. The popularity of lambrusco overseas and the gradual

acceptance in Italy of foreign wines provoked a similar revolution in the Italian palate,

which came also to demand a softer and rounder wine. In fact, the success of the

lambrusco well illustrates the conflict between Italians’ own perception of wine and how

they have historically marketed their wines to the Anglo-American world. In Italian

culture, wine complements a meal so that flavours, textures and fragrances are enhanced

even in the most basic of dishes. The pairing of montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a simple red

from the Abruzzi, for example, with porchetta, requires that the wine complements and

amplifies the flavours present in the dish as a whole. By contrast, in the US, wine has

been perceived as cumbersome if it appears too distinctive in relation to food or if it

requires too much thought. Thus wine should not warrant too much reflection; as an

accompaniment to pizza, wine should be consumed quickly As a result, some of Italy’s

great wines are still virtually unknown in many parts of the Anglo-American world.

This fact poses a problem for Italian wine exporters, who see their mission to the

Anglo-American market as primarily an educational one. In fact, some exporters feel it is

necessary to introduce the less demanding wines of valpolicella, bardolino, pinot grigio,

and amarone to the American palates in order to create an interest in the more querulous

wines, whose flavours might not emerge quite so straightforwardly. The opulence and

elegant austerity of the Piedmont’s barolos and barbarescos are cases in point. These aged

wines are primarily the expression of the nebbiolo grape; the difference between the two

is the respective time that they are left to age in oak barrels. They are classic cellaring

wines and embody the soul of Italian winemaking; they are truly ‘philosophies in a

bottle’. When barolos are drunk too young, however, they are tight, tannic chores, which

require real patience from the consumer, if the consumer is at all interested in the wine’s

complexities. The third competing narrative in Italian winemaking, wine for the palate,

suggests that premium wines require time and reflection in order to understand and

imagine their nuances.

Even connoisseurs, accustomed to the legendary wines of California, France and

Australia’s Grange Hermitage, have no analogue for the many kinds of local premium

wines produced in Italy. This problem is compounded when one realizes that over two

thousand grape varietals are alleged to exist in Italy and that the internationally

recognized cabernet is just a small percentage of wines in that eclectic mix. In fact,

Italian cabernet only emerged as a varietal to be taken seriously in its own right during

the 1980s. Likewise, the backbone of Italian varietals, barbera, is almost unknown in the

United States, except through the efforts of some of the Cal-Ital winemakers.

However, barbera holds an esteemed place in relation to two other principal varietals,

sangiovese, the primary grape in chianti, and nebbiolo, the primary grape in barolo.

Depending on the wine, the varietals can be hot and spicy, or reminiscent of wild berries,

tar and leather. Although these three varietals produce red wines (rosso), white wines

(bianco) are also commonplace in Italian culture. The best-known varietals derive

primarily from pinot, riesling and tokai stocks and can be either as dry as stone and slate,

or as fragrant as wildflowers and freshly cut herbs. Rosé (rosato) and sparkling wines

(spumante) are likewise produced in many areas. Moreover, all of these types of wines

vary in style according to the residual amounts of sugar after vinification; thus they can

be very dry (secco), semi-dry (semi-secco) or sweet (dolce).

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Another style of wine, vin santo, is a passito wine also extremely popular with

Italians. Vin santo is known as a dessert wine but can be vinified in a sherry-like style. As

a passito wine, it is usually sweet and made from semidried grapes. Vin santo is

culturally understood as ‘the holy wine’ because it is made historically between

Christmas and Easter.

Since the 1970s, almost all Italian wines have been influenced by lambrusco’s success

with mass production. What was once consigned to fate -how various varietals would fare

season by season -has now been superseded by technology and science. Indeed,

technology has ensured that Italian wines reach consistently high levels of quality

throughout the vintages. Moreover, new wine technology has changed the making of

some white wines altogether. For example, the historic practice of leaving white varietals

‘on their skins’ has been permanently displaced by more efficient methods. Likewise, the

presence of oenology has transformed the red wine industry. The teroldego of the

Trentino-Alto-Adige appears to the watchful eyes of oenologists to be one of the most

impressive vinological transformations of the nineties and its recent showing at Vinitaly,

the foremost wine fair in the world, heralds it as the symbol of Italian winemaking for the

twenty-first century.

Nevertheless, Piedmont with its barolos, barbarescos and gattinaras, and Tuscany with

its chiantis and brunellos, have long held a place of primary importance both legislatively

with the DOC, and popularly with Italian wine connoisseurs. However, as the example of

teroldego demonstrates, every province falls under the legislative gaze of the DOC;

therefore, every province either has already or hopes to have in the near future specific

wines included in the DOC’s hierarchical system of classification.

Known as No. 930, the Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) system

stipulates that winemakers must prove that their wines derive from specified or controlled

areas. In this way, the Italian government attempts to legislate the wine industry. In 1993,

42 DOC areas existed within Italy’s 20 regions. Primarily done for the sake of the

European Common Market consumer, the DOC provides legislative protection. Prior to

the DOC’s inauguration in 1963, in fact, and as early as 1924, consortia of producers had

attempted to designate controlled areas for the production of chianti, Italy’s historically

popular wine. The consortium, Chianti Classico, organized the producers of that region

and were able to get lawmakers to approve the zone in 1932. However, after the Second

World War, the Italian courts could not devote attention to the problems of the emerging

wine trade and so producers from all over Italy could produce wines labelled chianti.

Similarly, some wines from the designated zone, even from the same vineyard, were

radically different from each other so that the consumer had no guarantee that a wine

labelled chianti actually was chianti. The DOC legislation made it illegal to call a wine

chianti unless it was produced from sangiovese grown in the DOC’s Chianti zones.

However, No. 930 initially promised consumers that wines so labelled were also made

according to a minimum standard of quality. Thus the DOC appended ‘Guaranteed’

(Garantita) to Italy’s classified wines. In other words, the DOCG determines that Italian

wines produced in DOC regions have to uniformly and consistently guarantee their

quality as well as their origin. In 1992, law No. 164 altered the previously all-

encompassing DOCG to indicate only premium wines of a superior level. The more

recent law ensures that producers do not overproduce this special class of wine. Although

the effect of this legislation has been a consumer’s dream, the government’s desire to

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standardize the operations and the quality of Italian wines is at odds with the soul of the

winemaking industry. This cultural caesura escalated into what has become the vino da

tavola (table wine) revolution in Tuscany.

On the one hand, Tuscany is the historic producer of some of Italy’s most legendary

reds: chianti, brunello di Montalcino and vino nobile di Montalcino. These wines are all

DOC-recognized wines. On the other hand, Tuscany produces grapes for winemaking in

areas outside its fourteen legislatively recognized DOCs. In fact, the production of

premium non-DOC wine, an earlier winemaking scandal, has become a symbol of the

creativity and individualism of the Italian wine-making industry. These ‘Super Tuscans’

emerge from areas not only unrecognized by the DOC, but even previously unknown for

premium wine in Italian popular culture. Under Italian law, these wines can only be sold

under the label of table wines (vino da tavola). However, Italian table wines had always

been cheap and, whether bought at a wine store, a cooperative or from a farmer, they

were notable only because they were affordable necessities, available in great quantity.

Thus the ‘Super Tuscans’ have transformed the humble image of Italian table wine

into a symbol of oenological rebellion against governmental attempts to standardize

Italian creativity. The idea that Italian wine reflects the individual wine-maker’s palate

and creativity emerges, moreover, in direct opposition to the image of an homogenous,

standardized, consistent product for a standardized European consumer. In other words,

the ‘Super Tuscans’ have thwarted the DOC’s attempt to rehabilitate Italy according to

the rubrics of an imagined European palate. Thus table wines have become a

manifestation of some of the greatest achievements in Italian winemaking. Ironically, the

prices to be paid for these new wines must reflect then not the legislation’s assessment of

them, but rather the winemaker’s personal style and qualities, a significance at odds with

the lexical definition of table wines.

The significance of wine in Italy suggests, then, a culture both heterogeneous and

creative, necessarily fraught with contradictions. The morass of legislation prompts

winemakers to take innovative risks while, at the same time, they revel in a tradition that

is singularly theirs. Even with the changes in palate, wine continues to be a critical

component holding together disparate sectors of society. Whether through the Marxist co-

operatives of lambrusco or the aristocratic producers of barolo, wine remains a cultural as

well as a dietary staple of Italy.

Further reading

Anderson, B. (1994) Wines of Italy: Vino, The Quality of Life, Rome: Italian Institute for

Trade/ICE.

Cleave, D. (1989) The Wines of Italy, London: Salamander.

Hazan, V. (1982) Italian Wine, New York: Knopf.

Pedrolli, F. and Sola, P. (1994) Vias Wines, Trento: Alvin Service.

Robinson, J. (1995) Oxford Companion to Wine, London: Oxford University Press.

KITTY MILLET

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winter sports

Encircled by the Alps along its northern edge and with the Apennine range running the

length of the peninsula, Italy has many mountain regions which offer many possibilities

for recreational and competitive winter sports. Italy was one of the original sixteen

countries which participated in the first Olympic Winter Games held at Chamonix,

France, in 1924, but almost thirty years passed before an Italian stepped onto the podium.

The first medals for Italy came in 1952 in Oslo, where Zeno Colò won the men’s

downhill ski race and Giuliana Minuzzo took bronze in the women’s downhill

(competing under the married name Chenal-Minuzzo, she won another bronze in the

women’s giant slalom in the games of 1960, the only medal taken by Italy that year).

In 1956, it was Italy’s turn to host the games. The site chosen was Cortina d’Ampezzo,

an exclusive resort and picturesque village nestled in the Dolomite range of the eastern

Alps. More nations (32) and athletes (820) than previously took part, and for the first

time ever, television cameras were present to broadcast the games, a factor which greatly

increased the number of spectators and consequently the popularity of winter sports.

Among other things, the cameras broadcast images of the first Olympic team representing

the USSR. It became immediately clear that the Soviet Union was a force to be reckoned

with, as its team went on to dominate the 1956 games, winning sixteen medals overall,

including seven gold.

Italy won three medals in front of the home crowd, its best performance to that time.

All three came from bobsledding competitions, beginning a tradition of Italian strength in

the sport. In Cortina, Lamberto Dalla Costa guided Italia 1 to victory in the two-man

bobsled race, and Eugenio Monti in the Italia 2 took the silver medal in the same

competition. Monti, who won another silver medal in the four-man bobsled in Cortina,

there began his quest for Olympic gold as part of a long career that made him one the

world’s all-time great bobsledders.

Since the Winter Games of 1960 did not include bobsled competitions, Monti’s next

chance came in 1964, in Innsbruck, Austria, where however he only managed two bronze

medals. Monti finally achieved his goal in 1968, at the age of forty. At the tenth Winter

Olympics in Grenoble, France, he climbed the highest step of an Olympic podium for

both the two-man and the four-man bobsled, topping his previous Olympic silver and

bronze medals and adding to his nine titles as world champion.

1968 proved to be a particularly good year for the Italian contingent, which won more

gold medals in Grenoble than in all the previous Winter Olympics combined. After an

investigation that revealed foul play on the parts of the two East German lugers, who

placed first and second, Italian luger Erica Lechner’s third place was transformed into a

gold medal. More shocking yet, and this time completely of his own doing, was the gold

medal clinched by twenty-seven-year-old Franco Nones. Never in the previous nine

Winter Games had a non-Scandinavian won a cross-country ski race; Nones broke that

tradition when he won the 30 kilometre event.

In the years between 1971 and 1976, a group of Italian skiers known as la valanga

azzurra (the blue avalanche) managed to claim most of the available trophies. Gustavo

Thoeni was the foremost among this group of champions. As was the case for many who

lived in remote Alpine villages, skiing was Thoeni’s means of transportation from very

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