Surprising things tend to happen in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the ski resort town in northern Italy’s Dolomites. In For Your Eyes Only (1981), James Bond evades bad guys with big guns by skiing down the competition ramp, into the woods, across a family’s lunch table, down the bobsleigh run and over the head of a startled Alpine cow — all to a chugging disco beat, in the notable soundtrack absence of the great John Barry.
In 1923, it was where Ernest Hemingway was finally able to write again after the “great suitcase debacle” of the previous year, in which his wife’s case, containing all his manuscripts and duplicates, was stolen at the Gare de Lyon. Thirty years on, it was where Hemingway spectacularly failed to ski with the local instructor, despite having hired him.
As Miccia Alvera later explained to travel writer Andrew Slough: “On the first day I went to Hotel de la Poste and met Mr Hemingway, who was wearing a velvet jacket. When I suggested he should change into his ski clothes, he said, ‘No, now you have a whiskey.’ We started to drink whiskey, and I was drunk by lunchtime. Afterward we went to his room in the Villa Aprile, and Hemingway started to write. On the second day I came in my ski clothes, and the day proceeded as before. On the third day I came in my street clothes, and the day proceeded as before. And so the week passed. Mr Hemingway was a very precise person.”
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And in 1956, Cortina was where the modern Winter Olympics was born, and the old ones died. Running from January 26 to February 5, they were the first Games to seek corporate sponsorship, from companies including Fiat and Olivetti. They were the first Winter Games to be televised to a multinational audience – the broadcasters paid nothing, but would do so heavily in future. And they were the first Winter Games to welcome the Soviet Union, which sent state-sponsored, full-time athletes and was rewarded with 16 medals – five more than any other country – including seven golds.
Now, 70 years on, the Games are returning to Cortina between February 6 and 22 (the town shares hosting duties with Milan). They will require 2.4 million cubic metres of artificial snow, leaving a huge carbon footprint (930 tonnes of emissions). Nearly 70 corporate sponsors and official partners will help Cortina attempt to recoup an outlay estimated at €118m (£102m), a figure that has led to the local mayor receiving death threats.
And, as the photos of 1956 reveal, something else will be missing: the innocence of clean air and pure sport.
