Olympic Albertville

Accompanied by a friend, I went to Haute-Savoie to attend the Albertville '92 Winter Olympics. In the middle of the night we reached Chambéry by train from Italy, and at the local station we changed trains to reach Albertville. The town had very little of a winter town about it, there wasn't a shred of snow, but besides being the official seat of the Games it was also the starting point for the numerous ski resorts that hosted the various sporting disciplines. The atmosphere in those days, however, was the classic Olympic one, with thousands of athletes and tourists from every corner of the world. Unable to see everything, we made a selection of the sports to follow. After a short tour of the town we reached, by shuttle bus, the famous winter sports resort of Val d'Isère, where at the hotel hosting "Casa Modena" we met up with a friend who was a Rai journalist.

We dined in the same restaurant where Alberto Tomba was having his meal, and the next day we would see him compete in the slalom. We slept in a three-bed room booked by Rai where our journalist friend was staying. The following morning we watched Tomba's winning run, then by shuttle bus — which was free, by the way — after saying goodbye to our journalist friend and passing through Bourg-Saint-Maurice, we returned to Albertville. The next day we moved on to Les Saisies to watch the biathlon, while we devoted the afternoon to strolling around Albertville among a cosmopolitan crowd. The following day it was the turn of Méribel, a truly beautiful ski resort with the classic mountain architecture. Here, where the women's alpine skiing events were held, we would have liked to watch Debora Compagnoni's double after she had won the Super-G the day before.

That morning, however, in the Giant Slalom she suffered a serious injury that kept her away from the ski slopes for a long time. The last evening we stayed at a hotel in Moûtiers. On the last day we moved to La Plagne to watch the four-man bobsleigh event, where a friend of ours was competing. That same afternoon we returned to Italy by train.