Exactly fifty years ago, in the aftermath of the historic binge in the Berchtesgaden giant slalom (5 Italians in the first 5 places), an expression was coined, “The blue avalanche”, which is still the symbol of a dominance that has remained unique in the history of Italian alpine skiing.
The tale of this glorious epic is entrusted to an author and director who on this occasion reveals his past as an aspiring champion: Giovanni Veronesi.
“Skiing is like writing without punctuation, without commas or periods, without constraints or gates; skiing is touching absolute freedom and curve after curve, with your thighs burning, being happy. I’m a failed skier, my friends say. Instead I say “failed”. I did nothing but ski until I was 14, race after race, to become a champion, and I didn’t make it. This is the push that convinced me to tell the story of the Blue Avalanche. Those are truly my myths, they are what I would have liked to be in life, they are Me inside. There is snow in my memories, there is always snow, and my brain turns white if I don’t stop remembering.”
Gustav Thoeni, Piero Gros, Paolo De Chiesa, Fausto Radici, Stefano Anzi, Giuliano Besson, Tino Pietrogiovanna, Erwin Stricker, Rolando Thoeni, Helmuth Schmalzl, Franco Bieler, Herbert Plank, Marcello Varallo, together with the legendary coach Mario Cotelli, become idols of a generation; skiing, from a niche sport, becomes a mass phenomenon, which pours thousands and thousands of practitioners onto the slopes, glues enthusiasts in front of the television and makes an allied economy flourish which contributes to the affirmation of Made in Italy in the world. A sporting cyclone, which the voice of Giovanni Veronesi brings to life through the testimonies of the protagonists in a docufilm that retraces its entire parable, starting from dawn and ending with the inevitable sunset.
The blue avalanche is the reconstruction of an exciting season which, as in the case of tennis, brings to the surface the conflict between the characteristics of Italianness: reserve versus gasconery, instinct versus sacrifice, comedy versus tragedy. A tragedy, in fact, will put an end to that unrepeatable adventure: the fatal accident that occurred to the youngest of the team, Leonardo David, in 1979, which kept him in a coma for many years until his death in 1985.
The documentary film, whose work is still underway, is produced by Domenico Procacci, written by Giovanni Veronesi, Sandro Veronesi, Domenico Procacci, Lorenzo Fabiano and Luca Rea.
Dimitri Chechi does the photography and Riccardo Giannetti does the editing.
A Fandango production with Luce Cinecittà in collaboration with Rai Documentari.