September 27, 2024 Stories of sport and life
Everyone was sure of his bright future.
Leonardo David, an unlucky champion
Fate, bad luck, carelessness, superficiality.
These and many other words, controversies, despair, tears, so much was spent in vain after Leonardo David’s young life was cut short too soon, in too stark contrast to his cheerfulness, simplicity and courage as a boy at the height of his life and sporting career.
Good-natured, sweet-faced and a sportsman of character, David had a crystal-clear talent, an innate class that propelled him to the top of the world at the tender age of 18.
A few years younger than Ingemar Stenmark, he was considered the only up-and-coming athlete capable of containing the overwhelming power of the giant Swedish slalom racer, who still holds the World Cup record with 86 victories.
The regret is all the greater when one considers that Leo would have been the skier who, from generation to generation, would have represented the continuity of Italian skiing from the “Thoeni-Valanga Azzurra” period to the “Tomba” period.
Thoeni retired in 1980, while Tomba won his first race in 1987.
In fact, between 1980 and 1987, the Italian national ski team was unable to produce a true champion capable of winning at a high level with continuity.
As a result, skiing virtually disappeared from television and newspaper headlines in the 1980s.
In order to “build” Leonardo David as an athlete capable of winning the World Cup, the then technical managers of Italian skiing decided to “launch” him in the downhill.
In fact, Leo had to win the necessary points in the Combined to overtake Swedish ace Ingemar Stenmark.
The insiders were already all sure of his bright future.
Unfortunately, David suffered two bad falls in the last two free downhill runs he would run.
The first at the Italian Championships in Cortina, the second – the fatal one – after about ten days in the United States during the pre-Olympic Games in Lake Placid on 3 March 1979.
The fact remains that Leo never woke up from that last autumn and remained in a coma for six long years, during which everyone’s hopes alternated with despair.
The young champion died on 26 February 1985, as commemorated by a plaque in front of the Oberteilplats church in his home town of Gressoney la Trinitè.
