Eugenio Monti Print, Vintage Bob Poster, Italia Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

BOB ITALIANO DI EUGENIO MONTI — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Bob italiano di Eugenio Monti, 1956-1968.

At Innsbruck in 1964 the British bobsleigh pair of Tony Nash and Robin Dixon completed their first run and found that a bolt on the rear axle of their sled had sheared. Without it they could not start the second run. There was no spare.

Eugenio Monti was in the lead. He was the best driver in the world, thirty-six years old, with a wall of world titles behind him and no Olympic gold in front of him. He had been beaten into second place at Cortina in 1956 in front of his own people.

He was told about the British problem at the bottom of the run. He took a spanner, removed the bolt from his own sled, and sent it up to them.

Nash and Dixon fitted it, took their second run, and won the gold medal. Monti finished third.

What happened afterwards is the part worth keeping. Italian reporters put it to him that he had given away a gold medal. His reply has been quoted ever since and it is not sentimental: Nash did not win because of the bolt, he won because he had the fastest run.

The International Fair Play Committee awarded him the first Pierre de Coubertin medal in history. It has been given fewer than twenty times since.

It is easy to file this as sportsmanship and move on. It is more interesting than that. Monti did not think he had sacrificed anything, because in his account the result was already decided by the driving. The gesture cost him a medal and he refused, for the rest of his life, to describe it as a cost.

He kept going. At Grenoble in 1968, at forty years old, he finally won the Olympic titles that had escaped him for twelve years: gold in the two-man and gold in the four-man, the second decided by a tie on time and awarded to Italy on the fastest single run.

He had ten world championships. He is remembered for a bolt.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.