THE OLYMPICS / WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : Beast Is a Beauty : Tomba Tones Down His Messiah Act, but Only a Little

Has it really been four years since Alberto Tomba opened his act on the Olympic stage at Calgary? Four years that we’ve had to endure the “Beast” and his “Messiah” routine?

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

Another is to appreciate what this 25-year-old Italian has done for the Winter Games in general, and the sport of ski racing in particular. He doesn’t merely win races, he wins hearts and minds, not only of his countrymen--and women--but of everyone who likes to watch a great athlete capable of delivering on his boast.

Tomba’s victories, including 26 in World Cup competition and two in the Winter Olympics, have been well chronicled, as have his antics. Playful as a teddy bear, he says whatever strikes his fancy, originally in Italian but lately in a little English, too.

At Calgary, there was his attempt at courting German figure skating champion Katarina Witt. “Sure,” he said after winning the slalom, “I would like to see Katarina tonight, and maybe if she doesn’t win a gold medal, I can give her one of mine.” That proved to be unnecessary.

Then came his summer of eat, drink and be merry as all of Italy clamored to be his friend. The pasta and vino caught up with him the following winter, and Tomba began to ski like everyone else.

When he broke his collarbone during an ill-fated fling at the super-G event in late 1989, there was some question whether he would ever regain his form.

“La Bomba” himself became concerned, and by the spring of 1990, Team Tomba had been formed, consisting of a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a masseuse and a new coach, four-time World Cup champion Gustavo Thoeni, in addition to the usual assortment of ski technicians.

Fat turned to muscle on Tomba’s 6-foot-1, 193-pound frame, and he finished the 1990-91 World Cup season in second place overall, just 20 points behind his main rival, Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg.

At Aspen, Colo., last March, the new Tomba displayed himself to America. He denied again that he had ever shouted, “Sono una bestia,” or, “I am a beast,” after one of his early victories, and said his purported claim to be the “new Messiah of skiing” was caused by a faulty interpreter. Others said they’d heard him right.

In any event, it was a somewhat changed Tomba in Aspen. He said at the time: “I am still outgoing, but not while I am training. When I used to train with the (Italian) team, my attitude was different. I was able to go all out in skiing and have fun, too. Then things became more difficult for me, and I matured. But I still like to have fun--outside skiing.”

Now, fun in the off-season includes trying to maintain his relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Cristina Bignami, while visiting the family home near Bologna, where his father, Marco, runs a successful textile business and his mother frequently whips up batches of spaghetti topped with her own special sauce.

It’s a welcome break for Tomba, whose in-season diet consists of a power drink for lunch and then a chicken or veal dinner.

But his training day still doesn’t begin until mid-morning, unlike that of most other racers, who are on the first chairlift to the top of the slalom hill. After all, you can get too serious about this skiing business.

Serious will never be the word to describe Tomba.

The usual routine after he wins a race is to join the normally somber-sided Swiss or Austrians who’d finished second and third in the interview room, don a totally irrelevant cap and immediately exchange joking insults with the Italian media. His replies to questions are accompanied by throwaway lines and references to the party he has planned that night, whether true or not.

By session’s end, even the Swiss and the Austrians are guffawing.

Girardelli manages to hold his own with Tomba. At Aspen, the Italian said of his future plans: “Maybe I will go to Hollywood. . . . “ Whereupon Girardelli broke in: “And I will go along to do his makeup.”

Before Hollywood, though, there are the Winter Olympics starting Saturday, then a continuation of the World Cup season in which Tomba has already won five slaloms and two giant slaloms. After that, who knows? Maybe the next Winter Games, two years from now at Lillehammer, Norway.

What is the secret behind Tomba’s domination of ski racing’s technical events? According to Billy Kidd, an Olympic slalom silver medalist in 1964, “Tomba makes it look easy. When he skis a slalom course, he keeps his upper body quiet and let’s his skis swing around the gates, keeping as straight a line as possible. He is so strong and turns so quickly, there is no wasted motion.”

Not everyone is thrilled by Tomba’s approach to life and ski racing, especially some of his “teammates.”

Since Tomba trains on his own, the other Italian skiers rarely see him except at races, and 23-year-old Fabio DeCrignis, for one, voiced his opinion on the subject late last season.

“It is a very bad thing,” DeCrignis said, “because the younger racers on the team need a way to compare their performance in training, to judge what it really means. When a ski nation has a great talent such as Tomba, they should keep it and have him working with the team. . . . Maybe that might not be a good thing for Alberto now, but it would be vital for the Italian team.”

There’s not much likelihood that Tomba will be mingling with his countrymen during the next two or three weeks, because he plans to stay focused on the Olympic giant slalom at Val d’Isere on Feb. 18 and the slalom at Les Menuires four days later.

Swiss racer Paul Accola is waiting for Tomba to lose his concentration, as he apparently did Sunday for just a moment in his second run of the World Cup giant slalom at St. Gervais, France. The bobble caused him to finish second behind Didrik Marksten, a relatively unknown Norwegian.

The day before, Accola, who leads Tomba in the World Cup standings, won the super-G at St. Gervais, and now shows every sign of having overcome a budding early-season “Tomba complex,” as he called it after the Italian beat him twice on the same weekend at Park City, Utah.

But then, Accola does not have one thing going for him that Tomba has. After all, these Games are being held in . . . is it Albertoville?

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