His Skiing Is Great, but His Act Gets Old

The image of male skiing enthusiast as playboy is hardly new. The stereotypical “ski bum” bears no resemblance to an equally stereotypical hobo, except for a stubble of beard that exists simply because he prefers it that way, rather than because he could afford no razor.

He is rarely underprivileged or overfed, either of which could be bad for his reputation. He is handsome in the Robert Redford/Mark Harmon mold, smartly dressed, crisply pressed and expertly tressed. Oh, and somewhere in this mental snapshot, naturally, there is a wood-burning fireplace, a snifter of cognac and the playboy’s attentive female companion.

Alberto Tomba adores this concept.

He embraces it, as he embraces life, as he embraces women whenever or wherever he can find them, doing his best to uphold yet another stereotype, that of the masculine Italian who goes around with his index finger and thumb in a permanent pinch.

He is madcap and carefree and his audience loves it, forgetting, or ignoring, the reality that there is nothing terribly funny in this day and age about the promiscuous male. The breaking news from the United States alone, on the Magic Johnson front and on the Mike Tyson front, provides enough proof of that.

Alberto Tomba’s whole shtick is his experience with the opposite sex. Then again, so is Andrew Dice Clay’s, and how funny is he? Tomba is not so much rude or crude as he is devil-may-care bachelor and rogue, and his intended persona, should it help influence one’s judgment of him, is that of someone who adores women, not of one who abhors them.

In the village of Val d’Isere, where the great French champion Jean-Claude Killy quit school after his 16th birthday to devote his life to skiing, the hotdog from suburban Bologna turned up Tuesday for the men’s giant slalom snowdown after laying low back home, across the border. With him came a gaggle of devotees, gapers and groupies who got as much kick as Tomba did out of his winning an Olympic gold medal for the third time.

At Calgary, where he had been Alberto in Alberta, both the slalom and giant slalom prizes became his. Here in France, he has proclaimed himself Alberto of Albertville, personally thanking the population for having the place named in his honor.

For Tomba, there is no such thing as being pure as the driven snow. His skis are simply extensions of his personality, not only the tools of his trade but his utensils for having fun in the snow.

“But I think the women, they would rather be with the champion than with the one who loses, no?” Alberto asks.

He would know. And what he doesn’t already know, he intends to find out.

Bombastically, Tomba says: “I cannot help myself, you know, being a man. I am a man and that is what I am.”

Perhaps something suffers in the translation, or perhaps la Bomba is, as they say, more show than go, but whatever the truth may be, he would do well to learn the lesson of Monsieur Killy, the host and toast of Olympic skiing in this part of the world, whose similar lust for life after winning three gold medals at Grenoble in 1968 led to his contracting a social disease in America and attracting a paternity suit in Austria.

In other words, Alberto:

Give it a rest, will you?