In less than a year, Turin will welcome the world to the Winter Olympics. It will be a time for celebrating, but also for remembering. In a series of events recently to mark the beginning of the countdown to the Games, there was in the back of many minds and the corner of many hearts the memory of a plane crash on a nearby mountain 56 years ago.
It killed all of the Torino Calcio soccer team, regarded as the best in the world in its time and the best Italian club of any time.
The tragic loss of the team called the Grande Torino is not nearly as well known in the English-speaking world as that of Manchester United in a plane crash in Munich nine years later, yet arguably was felt even more grievously and left an even grimmer legacy. Manchester United, as all know, did at length recover its former glories. Torino never has, winning only one championship since, and now plays in Serie B.
For some in Turin, the Winter Games will be their tribute to the Grande Torino. They include Valentino Castellani, the head of the Games organising committee, who was nine at the time and already a passionate Torino fan. "We would go around in the village writing on the walls: 'Viva Toro', and 'Abasso Juve'," Castellani told the Los Angeles Times. "Juve" is Juventus, the other Turin team.
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