Turin – Bar Arditi occupies a small street corner in the gritty, industrial north-central part of Turin. It’s across town from the majestic red arch spanning the quaint Olympic Village, hours from the sleek alpine slopes of Sestriere, yet to the Torinesi and, in a way, to most Italians, tiny Bar Arditi represents the epi center of their sporting universe.
Bar Arditi is a soccer bar, a Juventus bar, a gathering place for followers and players of the greatest soccer franchise in Italian history. The bar, no larger than the foyer at Elway’s in Cherry Creek, has one table and two chairs. There is no TV. But the walls are covered with nine black-and- white Juventus jerseys and photographs of Juventus fans at matches and Juventus players hanging out at Arditi.
Gregorio Alberti, 22, is standing at the bar in front of the cappuccino machine. He’s asked if he’s interested in the Olympics. Wearing a Juventus scarf, he scrunches his face and waves his hand back and forth. Cosi-cosi. (So-so.)
“Only calcio, like 95 percent of Italians,” he says, using the Italian term for soccer. “Everywhere in Italy you speak calcio.”
The incongruity of shoehorning obscure winter sports into one of the most soccer-crazed nations on the planet illuminates the true mentality of the Italian sports fan.
Crack open an Italian’s skull and the brain will be white with black dots, a cerebral version of a soccer ball.
Italian Giorgio Rocca is the hottest slalom skier in the world and is favored to win gold. Carolina Kostner has a shot at Italy’s first women’s figure skating Olympic medal. Armin Zoeggeler is favored to defend his gold medal in luge.
Yet one day before the start of the Games, Corriere dello Sport, Italy’s Rome-based national sports daily newspaper, devoted its first 23 pages to soccer. Three pages of Olympic coverage began on Page 26.
“People always talk about soccer,” said Andrea Buongiovanni of Milan’s La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Having the Olympic Games is a good opportunity to talk about other things, so perhaps other people can get interested in that. It’s a great opportunity.”
The Torino Organizing Committee boasts ticket sales of 750,000 but quickly points out that hundreds of tickets remain available for 10 sports. Meanwhile, today’s soccer showdown between first-place Juventus and second-place Inter Milan in Milan’s 80,000-seat San Siro Stadium has been sold out for weeks.
Soccer’s World Cup in nearby Germany is only three months away. Italians are gathering energy, not to mention finances, to take part.
“We talk about ‘soccer widows’ because Sunday TV has all kinds of programs dedicated to soccer,” says Italian language instructor Gianfranco Russu, 61, a native of Genoa, Italy, who has lived in Denver for 25 years and operates annual tours of Italy. “You can watch all day long. Calcio is everywhere.”
There were relatively small pockets of Italian fans at Saturday’s opening-day events. The crowd at the speedskating venue was dominated by Dutch fans. The Italians in attendance were vocal when Enrico Fabris won the country’s first medal of the Turin Games.
At the women’s moguls competition in Sauze d’Oulx, Italians made up about 10 percent of the crowd – again vocal when Deborah Scanazio was ranked in the top three for a time. She finished ninth.
Italy has had its Winter Olympics heroes. Bobsledder Eugenio Monti won gold, silver and bronze in the 1950s and ’60s. Italy’s 4-by-10-kilometer cross country skiing relay team stunned Norway for gold on its home snow in Lillehammer in 1994. And Alberto Tomba won the slalom in 1988 and the giant slalom in 1988 and 1992.
But Tomba, who holds the record with seven consecutive World Cup victories in a season, transcended sports as a symbol of Italian sensuality, entertaining the sports world with his bawdy tales of promiscuity. Giorgio Rocca, a family man married to a lawyer with a brand new baby, can’t carry that torch.
To take away soccer’s thunder, sports journalist Buongiovanni says, an athlete “first of all must win. And you have to have a personality, not just on the field.”
Attend a soccer match, and you see why the Winter Games are an odd fit. An hour before the match on a frosty Wednesday night, the second deck of Stadio delle Alpi is already jammed. Known as Curva Sud (South Curve), it’s reminiscent of old Mile High Stadium’s South Stands in more than just name.
However, nothing at Mile High could match the energy of Curva Sud’s black mass of gyrating humanity, singing songs on the cue of a leather-lunged fan with a microphone and the bang of drums by young men hanging over the rail. Hundreds of gigantic black-and-white flags fly in the 20-degree night air.
A banner reading “Drughi Bianconeri” represents a 2-year- old booster group whose symbol is a silhouette of the four thugs from “A Clockwork Orange.”
These fans mean business.
Enea Daniele, 26, will not attend an Olympic event, nor will he watch the Games on TV Sunday. Juventus is on.
“Juve is every year,” he says. “The Olympics is only every four years. The Olympics are for the rich. I cannot afford tickets.”
Juventus, which has won an unprecedented 27 national Serie A titles, scores an equalizer and hysterical fans throw themselves at the Plexiglas fence separating them from the field. But Juventus misses a penalty kick and settles for a 1-1 tie with Parma, which is tied for 16th in the 20-team league.
Heading back into town, black-and-white-clad fans fill a bus in silence.
They are not thinking of Giorgio Rocca.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
TV
8:30-11 a.m.
CNBC | Hockey: Canada vs. Russia (W)
11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
USA | Hockey: U.S. vs. Germany (W)
2-5 p.m.
KUSA-9 | Speedskating: 3,000 (W); cross country skiing: pursuits (M, W); luge: singles (M)
6-10 p.m.
KUSA-9 | Alpine skiing: downhill (M); short-track speedskating: 1,500 (M); ski jumping: normal hill; snowboarding: halfpipe (M); luge: singles (M)
10:30-11:30 p.m.
KUSA-9 | Olympic late night: short track speedskating: 3,000 relay (W), 5,000 (W); medal ceremonies
11:30 p.m.-3:30 a.m.
KUSA-9 | Prime-time repeat
