We’re traveling back in time to the Cortina 1956 Winter Olympics to hear all about the bobsled (or bobsleigh) competition. These Games saw some big changes: New rules about weight, new types of sleds and the introduction of Italian Eugenio Monti, whose results put him on the road to becoming a local hero and one of the best bobsled drivers of all time.
Cortina 1956 Winter Olympics: Bobsled
Bobsled at Cortina 1956 featured two men’s events (we’re still decades from women getting the opportunity to slide in the Winter Olympics). The 1700m bobsled track at Cortina featured 16 curves (you can find a drawing of it here), and it was a lot narrower than tracks of today. As Chris Fogt told us, that was one of the reasons for rebuilding the track for Milano Cortina 2026. Sleds featured tall handles, but they didn’t yet have full sides like we see today. Check it out here:
Mother Nature wins again?
The weather during these Olympics caused a lot of issues in the bobsled competition. Sunny days melted the track ice and limited practice time. Cold overnight temperatures caused the water system to freeze, which meant track repairs had to be done without water. The weight of the four-man sleds also caused some damage to the track, which may have had an effect on the final results.
A hero’s journey begins
One of the most legendary figures in the bobsled world is Italian Eugenio Monti, considered by many to be the greatest bobsled driver of all time. Every athlete needs to get their start somewhere, and Cortina 1956 was Monti’s first of three Olympics. Monti was local to the area, so he was familiar with the track. However, his keen skills led to two silver medals in these Games. In future editions, he would be known for his commitment to fair play and Olympic ideals (he’d also go on to complete two full sets of medals in spectacular fashion).
For the full story, be sure to listen to this episode!
If you liked this entry, be sure to check out other episodes in our series on the Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 Winter Olympics:
Sources
Carberry, Brian. “1, 2, 3 … “Hitting for the Cycle” Olympic Style! Journal of Olympic History. International Society of Olympic Historians. No. 2, 2012. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://isoh.org/wp-content/uploads/JOH-Archives/JOHv20n3q.pdf
Forti, Axel. “The Golden Sledge – The man behind Monti’s quest for Olympic Glory.” Journal of Olympic History. International Society of Olympic Historians. No. 3, 2013. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://isoh.org/wp-content/uploads/JOH-Archives/JOHv21n3u.pdf
Greenspan, Bud. Frozen in Time: The Greatest Moments at the Winter Olympics.1997. P. 27-30.
International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation. “History Bobsleigh.” Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.ibsf.org/en/our-sports/bobsleigh
Official Report of Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956.
https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll8/id/12644/rec/25. Accessed Apr. 24, 2026.
Olympedia. “Bobsleigh at the 1952 Winter Olympics.” Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/editions/34/sports/BOB
Olympedia. “Bobsleigh at the 1956 Winter Olympics.” Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/editions/35/sports/BOB
Olympedia. “Bobsleigh – Four Man.” Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/event_names/141
Olympedia – specific athlete pages
Olympics YouTube Channel. “Bobsleigh Through The Ages – Olympic Highlights.” Mar. 17, 2013. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. Bobsleigh Through The Ages – Olympic Highlights
Pinelli, Brian. “Honoring a Legend: Eugenio Monti’s Gear Showcased at Popular Cortina Restaurant.” IBSF.org. Feb. 3, 2026. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.ibsf.org/en/news/detail/honoring-a-legend-eugenio-montis-gear-showcased-at-popular-cortina-restaurant
Reuters Connect. “1957 ITALY: MOTOR RACING – Tragedy of MIlle Miglia when Marquis de Portago’s car crashes.” May 16, 1957. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://youtu.be/o3oUSqiBq5Q?si=FqeRZrjkp015Tfax
Smale, Simon. “Winter Olympics legend Eugenio Monti, the Italian sledder who helped his rivals win gold.” Australian Broadcasting Company. Feb. 14, 2026. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/winter-olympics-bobsled-legend-eugenio-monti-selfless-act/106188248
Telenews Daily News Film. “CORTINA, ITALY: ITALIANS TAKE BOBSLED, RUSSIANS WIN SKATING EVENT FOOTAGE: 89.” Vol. 9, Issue #22. Jan. 31, 1956. Accessed Apr. 23, 2026. https://youtu.be/TVfzF5kypes?si=NhsK5mmb_cUl9hD3
United States Olympic Committee. United States 1956 Olympic Book: Quadrennial Report. P.247-251, 277
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
Cortina 1956 Winter Olympics: Bobsled
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another history episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games and the games’ history, this is the show for you. uh, all year long we were looking back at Cortina 1956, as it is the 70th anniversary of these games. I,
Follow-up on Alpine Skier Toni Sailer
I got a follow-up from alpine skiing last, last time we talked alpine skiing. And-
Alison Brown: As if
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:30] alpine
Alison Brown: skiing wasn’t enough, now you’ve got more for me.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So after we recorded, after I went downstairs, and producer Ben was watching a James Bond movie, and it happened to be On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and it was exactly at the ski scene. And I looked at him and went, “Oh, that’s Tony Sailer.”
Alison Brown: And he thought you were the smartest person he had ever met- Well … and he was so happy to have [00:01:00] married you.
Jill Jaracz: Well, he always thinks that, right? But it was, it was so bizarre to, like, talk about him being James Bond’s stunt double, and then-
Alison Brown: And then
Jill Jaracz: seeing it … see that immediately. I also wanted to emphasize how big of a deal Tony Sailer is in Austria, because I asked my friend Sabrina, who, uh, said, “Yes, Tony Sailer’s a big deal,” and then got a video of her father waxing poetic about Tony Sailer for quite some time.[00:01:30]
Alison Brown: Right, the… You know, he’s the perfect age to have remembered this- Exactly. Exactly … and, and just thought that this was… He was the biggest star at the time.
Jill Jaracz: Right, and it, it’s so amazing how one person can impact several generations in that way. Because, like, we’ve been talking about Alyssa Liu and how a whole generation of kids just adores her, and she’s just transcended.
But I wonder how much this same generation, or even, like, the generation [00:02:00] behind us, how much Dorothy Hamill impacts them.
Alison Brown: Right. Right. You
Jill Jaracz: know?
Alison Brown: Just that- ‘
Jill Jaracz: Cause that’s our skater … how
Alison Brown: many people became skaters because of her.
Jill Jaracz: Right. But it, it seems like Tony Sailer, because he got into acting and singing, that he was able to, like, t- kinda transcend over time and make such an impact that way.
Cortina 1956: Background on the bobsled events
It’s so interesting. But, today we’re talking bobsled.
Alison Brown: And bobsled back in the day is, is no joke, and so much fun. I remember this even from [00:02:30] when we did Chamonix. Just bobsled before, say, the 1980s is the Wild West. So I’m so excited for this.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So it, it did change a lot from when you talked about it in Chamonix.
And when you talked about it, like, all the crew members sat in the se- sled and they bobbed to get the sled moving, right? So, uh, now we have, sleds with curved holes over the front, and, there are handles on the sides and back for the, brake man and the, [00:03:00] the other pushers to push. They’re kind of like, they don’t make tall walls.
The sled is still open on the sides, but they’ve got these handles that stick up. They don’t stick out the way they do now and then pop in. They’re just kinda upright. And, most of the sl- athletes in the sled are pretty much sitting upright the whole time still, you know? But you’re starting to see a little bit of men ducking down in the back.
But n- definitely not the, driver leaning back as far as they [00:03:30] can to be … There, there’s a little bit, but you, we’re, we’re still in early days of aerodynamics in bobsled. So, uh, Cortina 1956 was also the first Olympics that had a weight limit for the total crew and sled. So prior to this, as you noticed, there were a lot of very heavy people in the sport.
Because heavier sleds go down the hill faster. And at, uh, Oslo 1952, Germany swept the bobsled events and its, in its [00:04:00] four-man sled, team members weighed an average of 117 kilograms, which is 257.4 pounds.
Alison Brown: Those are some big men- … in a little sled.
Jill Jaracz: Right? So, so apparently federation said enough.
Alison Brown: Enough with the sausage.
Jill Jaracz: Right. Right. Maybe, maybe it was … I, I would love to see, like, what the chatter was. I don’t think it makes huge news because it’s bobsled. But I [00:04:30] wonder if the chatter was like, “These people don’t look like athletes, and this is a sport.” Hmm. And it’s not to say, you know, and not to say that you can’t be big and athletic, because definitely we see that in different sports.
It’s essential to be big in some sports. But I have a feeling, like, this is just being- Big … big and unhealthy in a way. The race was at the Pista del Bob, which had 16 curves. It was 1,700 meters long. That is 445 meters longer than the new track that got built for Milano Cortina [00:05:00] 2026.
Alison Brown: But not without, not outside the realm of some other tracks. I mean, 1,700 is not-
Jill Jaracz: Yeah …
Alison Brown: outrageous-
Jill Jaracz: Right … from
Alison Brown: what we still see today.
Jill Jaracz: Right. It also had a big scoreboard and this really cool electric diagram of the track that was like, had flashing lights all the way down. So they would flash as the sled went down the hill, and you could see where it was on the track.
Nice. Omega’s electric timing was part of the event, and it was [00:05:30] automatic to a 10th of a second. there is an old newsreel on YouTube that just shows the end of the course, and there’s no big house at the end that has the spectator stands that we see today.
there’s no foam pit that stops them they just hope for the best Just kinda keep going. Right, and they do have a brake man. They have brakes, but, like, they just kinda keep going, and in this YouTube video, there’s a Swiss sled that actually hits a cameraman, [00:06:00] and a cameraman has to be hauled off on a stretcher.
And luckily, there were four stretchers on special sleds and three ambulances at the ready for accidents like these.
Alison Brown: So they knew it was coming.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. The weather, of
Alison Brown: course- Bobsled’s still one of the more dangerous-
Jill Jaracz: Yes …
Alison Brown: of, of activities.
Weather proves to be tough on bobsled at Cortina 1956
Jill Jaracz: the weather, of course, was an issue. Snow was scarce. The run was icy, but organizers had to worry about, uh, a lot [00:06:30] of wear and tear on the track.
In the official report, there’s a lot of praise for race chief Federico Terscheck, who’d been in- involved in this track’s development and maintenance for 20 years. We could do a whole story just on him from what I’ve read, because he seems to be this big local legend in Cortina and in bobsled for that area.
And in the run-up to the games, he built up the curves of the track for better safety, and the official reports note that there weren’t [00:07:00] a ton of major crashes, although one of the U.S. brakemen got hurt during a skid in one of the curves. He managed to hang onto the sled and finish the race, but he got some kind of leg injury out of the deal.
But even with an expert maintaining the track, the weather was still challenging. the U.S. Olympic Committee’s United States 1956 Olympic book, the bobsled reports notes that drivers had to memorize the run because practice time was limited. If it was a clear day, the sun would start [00:07:30] melting the ice at 9:00 A.M., and officials would be forced to shut down practice by 10:00 A.M. So needless to say, weather was challenging
The two-man competition
The two-man event came first, and the two-man going into the Olympics, it could’ve been anyone’s game as the last three world championship drivers were not at Cortina. However, the two Italian teams, they had home track advantage, and they were the best drivers in the field.
Italy also had a very distinctive sled designed by Podar that [00:08:00] had a more aerodynamic look to it, and the report in the US Olympic book said that the weight had, also may have been a factor. The, the Italians were lighter, so they did not make minimum weight, and they had to ride with 150 pounds of lead bars attached to the bottom of the sled.
And the US said, quote, “Th- thus, this lowered the center of gravity, allowing, allowed them to slam through the curves at a greater speed than any of the other contestants.” Leading the field was driver Lamberto Dalla [00:08:30] Costa. Dalla Costa was a sergeant major in the Italian Air Force and was recruited to pilot bobsleds.
He was paired with Air Force Major Giacomo Conti, and they had great team chemistry. They were the fastest team for all four runs of the race. No question that they were winning. finishing just over a second behind was hometown hero Eugenio Monti, also known as Il Rosso Volante, The Flying Redhead.
Alison Brown: The early version of The [00:09:00] Flying Tomato.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right. So, uh, Monti had been a champion skier but sustained career-ending knee injuries while training for Oslo 1952, and a couple years later, despite never having done bobsled before, he and some friends decided to im- enter an amateur race. Uh, Monti was volunteered to drive, and he surprisingly won, and in s- doing so, he found a new sport.
So, he took up training for the games and teamed with Renzo [00:09:30] Alvera, who started bobsledding in 1953. So, we have some brand-new bobsledders, but they quickly become the favorites. Renzo’s brother, Michela, was in the four-man bobsled at Oslo 1952, so we’ve got some all-in-the-family stuff going on. So Monty had an edge on the competition because he knew the track like the back of his hand. He had finished first in qualifying, but he still fell short of gold, and Monty said later that it was both his sled and his driving were just no [00:10:00] good, and that’s why they got silver. that said, his driving must have been pretty decent because the Swiss pair of Max, Max Angst and Harry Warburton finished six seconds behind for the bronze
Alison Brown: It’s so funny when we hear these, these older time differences where now it’s like hundredths of a second.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Well, we’ll get there. There- And back in
Alison Brown: the day
Jill Jaracz: it’s- The, the difference- …
Alison Brown: it’s so big …
Jill Jaracz: the difference between bronze and fourth was .26 seconds, and [00:10:30] the difference between sixth and eighth was .05. Oh,
Alison Brown: okay.
Jill Jaracz: There we go. So still, you know, you still had some closeness in there. Um, who had the sled that finished in fourth just off the podium?
So you and I are both familiar with royalty in bobsled because Prince Albert of Monaco-
Alison Brown: Yes …
Jill Jaracz: was a bobsledder when we were getting into the Olympics.
Alison Brown: And Cor- Oh, oh, royalty in the Olympics. Lay it on me.
Jill Jaracz: Well, [00:11:00] Cortina 1956 had its own aristocrat, the Marquis de Portago, who drove Spain to a fourth place finish.
So the Marquis was a multi-sport talent, but 1956 was his oni- only Olympics. Fourth was his best finish. he finished ninth in the four-man, spoiler alert. The Marquis was notably a speed demon who also raced Formula 1 cars.
Alison Brown: Kinda goes together.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And in [00:11:30] 1957, he decided to race the Mille Miglia, a 1,000-mile race from Brescia to Rome and back. And when he and his driving companion, Nelson, got to, Guidizzolo, a tire popped, Marquis lost control of the car, crashed into a telephone pole, car went flying, spectators couldn’t get out of the way.
Nine people killed, five of those were children.
Alison Brown: Oh.
Jill Jaracz: 20 others injured. Both the Marquis and Nelson [00:12:00] died. Car was smashed to pieces, and, uh, this tragedy shut that race down.
Alison Brown: Wow.
Jill Jaracz: And, uh, that was it for the Mille Miglia. It’s since been revived as a classic car race, but it’s definitely not like we’re getting to some place as fast as possible.
This is- Right, it’s a different show … classic cars going through town. So, uh, very sad note to that story of, uh, somebody who, uh, did make a mark in the Olympics, [00:12:30] but let’s go back to bobsled.
The four-man competition
The four-man race, completely different story. So the gold medalist from the two-man, Della Costa, did not compete in the four-man, so now we have a lot more unpredictability here going on.
The heavier sleds were also tougher on the track, and the fourth run in particular was extremely difficult for organizers to pull off. So on the first day of competition, it’s all Switzerland. Switzerland 2, [00:13:00] very fast first run, led the field, followed by hometown hero Eugenio Monti in Italy, sled Italy 2.
And then USA- Go Monti. USA-1, piloted by Art Tyler, who had a PhD in physics and worked at Eastman Kodak, was in third. Well, there you go. Now there’s a nice melding of your work life and your sport life. Right? Uh, Switzerland 1 was in fourth. [00:13:30] This sled was driven by Franz Kapus, who was a 46-year-old competing in his 30- third Olympics.
On his sled was brakeman Heinrich Angst, competing in his second and final Olympics. The name Angst might be familiar from earlier in the story. Heinrich was the brother of Swiss two-pilot and medalist Max, and the brothers were butchers who started the Angst Meat Company that is still in existence today.
Hmm. There [00:14:00] is a third Angst sibling, Willy, who was an Olympic wrestler at Berlin 1936 and London 1948.
Okay. They take things very seriously. So, uh, Heinrich, or Hirie as his nickname was, uh, placed seventh in the two-man. Obviously wanted to be better in the four-man. Uh S- uh, second run, Monty from Italy has some issues, drops to fourth. [00:14:30] Swiss one and two leads the field. USA is still in third. Overnight, the temperature drops to minus 16 degrees Celsius, and, uh, that really changed the course.
The water system also froze, so this meant any repairs they had planned to do to fix up the course after day one had to be done without water.
Alison Brown: How do you make ice with no water?
Jill Jaracz: Uh, they must have dug stuff out of someplace else. I mean, and we’re also [00:15:00] dealing with, like, not a ton of snow. Right, like- So they may have trucked in stuff from someplace.
Alison Brown: Wow. Um,
Jill Jaracz: I mean, we’re still talking about a bobsled run that’s not far out of town.
Alison Brown: Right.
Jill Jaracz: Even though the town is smaller at this point, I bet it’s a little more, you know, the town got built up around the run.
Alison Brown: Right, right.
Jill Jaracz: But, uh, you know, you still gotta truck some stuff in. so the fourth run was especially difficult for later running sleds because at this point the track has holes in it [00:15:30] So Franz Kapos, Eugenio Monti, and Art Tyler were able to adjust, but Max Aangst in Swiss 2 had two tough runs.
He had the fifth and ninth fastest times respectively. He fell to fourth, almost two full seconds off the podium. Swiss 1 won the gold pretty handily. Uh, after their difficult first run, they really got it together and won the last three, and they were almost a second and a half faster than Italy 2, which got the silver.
And the difference [00:16:00] between silver and bronze was just .29 seconds, with USA 1 losing. Aw. So for the USA, this bronze medal was its last medal in the four-man until 2002.
So of the 12 men who stood on the podium in the four-man, only two went on to compete at another Olympics. And that could’ve been in part because there was no bobsled in 1960, ’cause they didn’t wanna build one. It was too expe- too expensive. [00:16:30] So athletes had to wait until 1964 for their chance to go back to the Olympics.
Eugenio Monti: Olympic legend
One of those two was American Jim Lamie, whose father was a really great speed skater at the beginning of the century, and the other was Italian legend Eugenio Monti. And, uh- Go Monti. I know. He was beloved in the bobsled community, although he had a reputation for dodging journalists. So he competed in, a couple more games.
He c- got the cycle, so he got gold, silver, and [00:17:00] bronze. Full set, which you like.
Alison Brown: I love
Jill Jaracz: that. For both, both the two-man and the four-man, and he did it identically. So he got the silvers in ’56, the bronzes in ’64, and the golds in ’68.
Alison Brown: Oh, wow.
Jill Jaracz: And he got the-
Alison Brown: That’s even better that his sets match.
Jill Jaracz: Right? It’s really funky how that worked out.
And he was 40 years old in ’68 when he finally got gold. and if 1960 had had bobsled, he would likely would’ve medaled there, too. [00:17:30] So Monti is particularly known for his acts of fair play This was big. In 1964, he helped repair the Canadian four-man sled, which had sustained a broken axle.
Canadians got gold. Then Monti also loaned the British two-man sled a bolt from his own sled, and the Brits took gold. And Monti later said, he’s like, “They didn’t win the golds because I helped them. They won the golds because they happened to be, happened to be better drivers that day.”
And that was really [00:18:00] seen as the epitome of sportsmanship. And he wanted to, he didn’t wanna win because they had broken sleds and he could’ve helped them. He wanted to race against the best. I mean,
Alison Brown: any good athlete wants their competitors to be at their best, so that the best person on the day wins, not because you lost a bolt.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. That’s just ridiculous. So, really beloved by the community. The Cortina Bobsled Track is now named for him. Even the old version of the Cortina track that was torn down to make way for the [00:18:30] 2026 track, that was named after him, too. This past winter, Rai 1 TV station in Italy had a movie about him called Rosso Volante.
Alison Brown: I love that
Jill Jaracz: nickname It’s a shame that, uh, we did not know this existed and tried to parse through it. sadly, in his older years, Eugenio Monti suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and in 2003 he died by suicide. Oh. Also a bummer that I, we didn’t know this, but during Milano Cortina, Al [00:19:00] Pacetto Restaurant Pizzeria had a display of Monti’s uniform, spikes, and Grenoble 1968 diploma, and a collection of torches.
And that’s a, a restaurant in Cortina. And, uh, we talked before about how Cortina did a lot of stuff and had so much 1956 memorabilia around, really celebrating that anniversary, but this was just another one of those touches that was there.
Alison Brown: Very lovely.
Sources
Jill Jaracz: So sources, we’ve got The Journal of Olympic [00:19:30] History, Bud Greenspan’s Frozen in Time: The Greatest Moments at the Winter Olympics, International Bobsleigh and Skee- Skeleton Federation, the official report of Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956, Olympia, the Olympics YouTube channel, Brian Pinelli, Reuters Connect, Australian Broadcasting Company, Telenews Daily News Film, and the United States Olympic Committee.
Alison Brown: That was fun. So- Bobsled is always fun when we get to look- Yeah … at the old stuff and you’re just like… How [00:20:00] much video did you watch just to entertain yourself as you were doing this?
Jill Jaracz: There, sadly, there’s, like, not a ton, and I didn’t get into the film yet- Mm … to really break down. But it, it is interesting, like, trying to piece together the little, tiny bits and w- re-watching it over and over just to see, like, okay, so how are they getting i- into the sleds this time?
Or I read about the sled being different, and, like, the Podar sleds were a little flatter on top and wider, it seemed like, than other sleds. But I could [00:20:30] not tell the difference on how fast they were going, of course. I kinda really wanted to see the sleds with… It tried to navigate these tracks that have holes in them, to be quite honest.
That had to be wild to deal with. I mean, you would never get that today. And that nobody,
Alison Brown: and that nobody did a seri- nobody had a serious crash with- Yeah … that kind of, of condition.
Jill Jaracz: Well, I, I wonder how the narrower tracks-
Alison Brown: Mm …
Jill Jaracz: were for [00:21:00] safety. You know, ’cause we’ve said that when, we figure… When we talked about why they needed to build the 2026 track and, Chris Fogt told us, “Yeah, the sleds today, today’s sleds can’t get down these nar- these old tracks.”
And so I wonder if having a narrow track with an o- more open bobsled was just as safe as having a big track today. Mm. ‘Cause I don’t know how fast they were going either. We, I don’t really have, speed predictions. [00:21:30] We just get times.
Alison Brown: Right. And you have to sit there and do the math. Right. That’s, that’s calculus above our grade level.
Jill Jaracz: You got that right, so. All right. So next time we’ll be talking cross-country skiing and, uh, keeping it real with Cortina 1956.
Thank you so much for listening.
Alison Brown: And until next time, keep the flame alive.