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OTTORINO MEZZALAMA
During the years which saw
a resurge of nationalism, germinated in the ashes of the First
World War, and given new impetus by the resentment stirred within
our borders by the "crippled victory", the very idea
of a large international group, strung together on a rope on
the border, attempting to sew together again idealistically the
lacerated limbs of the old Europe, seemed somewhat revolutionary.
Gaston Rebuffat would have termed it, not cordial amity but rather
"a friendship of the cord".
It was an enterprise of ample scope, which in the name of sport
left behind the limiting restrictions of narrow-minded nationalism,
to explode on the vast spaces of a mountain open to everyone.
Ottorino Mezzalama, was the
moving inspirational force behind it, with his wide-ranging explorations
all over the Alps, and can be considered to be the principal
European skier.
He was a formidable athlete, a member of the Turin Ski Club and
the Turin section of the CAI, who apart from skiing and mountaineering,
also dedicated himself to gymnastics, fencing and canoeing.
However, the grand project
which says everything about his brief life, was his crossing
of the Alps from Piedmont to Carnia, using a new art of locomotion-skiis.
The idea was developed together with his friends, in about ten
years, from 1920 onwards. It meant picking out, studying and
following a "high ski route", connecting the alpine
range from the Maritime Alps to the Julian. An initiative which
he pursued with indefatigable enthusiasm and which demanded every
spare moment of his free time. He made many lone trips to check
out the various itineraries allocated to each section of the
mountain.
It was an amazing undertaking which he pursued with method and
precision, but just when he was putting the finishing touch to
the snowy route he had baptised "the path of the year two
thousand", he was swept to his death by an avalanche on
the Breonie Alps, on the 23rd February 1931.
His dream was realised but he paid dearly for it. His friends
could think of no more effectual way to commemorate the man who
knew how to combine to techniques classifying ski-mountaineering,
than to launch the original contest, set in the stupendous surroundings
between Cervino and the icy heights of Monte Rosa, perhaps the
only honour worthy of the personality who had instigated it.
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