Shouldering A Nation’s Load Tomba’s Success Whips Ski-Happy Italians Into World Cup Frenzy

He kisses the snow. He kisses his fiancee. He even kisses his dog. Alberto Tomba’s colorful post-race celebrations are an inspiration to Italians who are feeling the blues.

Especially as they happen race after race after race.

Sociologists suggest that Tomba’s eight-race winning streak is helping Italians survive the strains of a long political crisis, the fall of the lira and growing unemployment.

Tomba’s latest triumph in a slalom at Kitzbuehel, Austria, drew a TV audience of 7.8 million, a record for a World Cup race in Italy.

The sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday ranked Tomba as the second-most popular Italian athlete of the century, behind only the late cycling champion Fausto Coppi.

The skier called “La Bomba” (The Bomb) because of his powerpacked charges between slalom gates doesn’t like sociological interpretations. He says pleasing Italian fans and winning races are part of his job.

And he loves the glory.

“I feel great, powerful. I’m selfconfident. I love to be No. 1,” he told the Italian magazine Epoca this week.

Tomba has been virtually unbeatable this season.

He has won all six World Cup slaloms so far and two out of the four giant slaloms, raising his career World Cup victory total to 41. He is likely to beat his season best of nine victories, set in 1988 when he also captured two Olympic titles at Calgary.

Some experts suggest that Tomba may even capture his first World Cup overall title, a target believed almost unreachable for a skier who does not compete in speed races and does not get points from downhills, super giant slaloms and combined.

Eight wins and a fourth place in a giant slalom at Tignes gave Tomba 850 points with 15 races left, including seven gate events. His next race is a slalom in Wengen, Switzerland, today.

Austrian Guenther Mader, an allaround skier, is a distant second in the overall standings with 482 points, while defending World Cup champion Kjetil Andre Aamodt trails Tomba by 450 points, in fourth place.

The 28-year-old skier from Bologna insists he’s not thinking about the overall title and says his priority is to win a world title in Sierra Nevada, Spain, next month.

A three-time champion and a twotime silver medalist at the Olympics, Tomba has never won gold at the World Championships.

“It’s time I filled the gap. If I keep the current form and determination I can have high hopes to win a race at Sierra Neveda,” said Tomba, who will only start in slalom and giant slalom in Spain.

Some have suggested that a special diet, harder summer training and an improved slalom style were behind the new explosion of La Bomba, who has slimmed down to 201 pounds compared with a peak of 212 a few years ago.

Some claimed that Tomba’s winning secret was his restored relationship with his fiancee, former Miss Italy Martina Colombari.

The 19-year-old model is again on hand to kiss Alberto at the finish line. So, incidentally, is his white Siberian husky, Yukon.

“He’s a great champion, and looks unbeatable this year,” Colombari told the magazine Panorma. “Away from the ski slopes, Alberto is a very normal person. We are a very normal couple.”

Friends say Tomba likes to watch TV and movies and visit friends in Bologna. He has also developed a passion as a wine collector and has piled up 2,400 rare bottles in the cellar of the family villa.

“Wine comes before Martina in the list of my great passions,” he joked recently on Austrian television.

Tomba was known as the man who called himself the messiah of skiing, who loved discos, who stuffed himself with homemade pasta, who chased women and joked that “two girls are not enough for me.”

But Tomba has matured and become more professional. He has a quiet way of life, according to his friends.

He still loves driving fast in his Ferrari Testarossa, Lancia and Alfa Romeo cars. But he has become more cautious after a collision with traffic police in 1993.

As Italian dailies are running short of superlatives for their frontpage headlines about Tomba’s triumphs, former Olympic champion Toni Sailer summed up Alberto’s qualities by saying, “He’s the greatest not only because of his victories but for the charm he exerts on fans… . Athletes like Alberto are a fortune for (Alpine) skiing.”

Tomba is certainly making his own fortune as well. He’s said to pocket about $6 million a year from commercial sponsors and publicity.

In addition, he has been earning 25 million lire ($13,000) for each World Cup win plus bonuses from his sponsors - food group Barilla, auto giant Fiat, Fila sportswear and Rossignol skis.

Most of Tomba’s contracts run through 1997, when the World Championships will be held in the Italian resort of Sestriere, one of his favorite tracks.

But it’s still uncertain if the Italian superstar will keep skiing until then. Tomba, who has suggested this could be his last season, said he will make a final decision about his future at the end of March.

“Right now I’m enjoying success and the attention of the fans,” Tomba told Gazzetta dello Sport. “But I already know that difficult times are just around the corner.

“A second-place finish, after so many wins, would be considered a disappointment. That’s life.”