Alberto Tomba

After a disappointing performance in the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics—no golds, and only one silver—Tomba had another phenomenal season in 1994-95. For over a year, starting on January 16, 1994, he was undefeated in slalom events. As in his early years, some of his victories were so lopsided as to be almost comical. He won one slalom race, early in 1995, by nearly two full seconds. There was more distance between Tomba and the runner-up than there was between the runner-up and the thirteenth-place finisher. In another race, on December 22, 1994, Tomba slid to a halt midway down the course, realigned himself, finished the course, and still won. This season, for the first time in his career, Tomba won the overall World Cup title, as well as the slalom and giant slalom titles.

Some in the media noted a mellowing of Tomba, at least in his personal life, in the 1994-95 season. At the

Alberto Tomba

bottom of the hill in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, in January of 1995, instead of making an outrageous self-congratulatory remark of the type he was known for when he was twenty-one, Tomba instead dedicated his win in the giant slalom that day to the victims of the war going on in Bosnia, a few hundred miles to the southeast. Reportedly, he became less of a womanizer as well, and started looking more seriously for someone to settle down with. He was engaged to a former Miss Italy for a time, although they broke up after a semi-nude photograph of her was run in a magazine.