Renzo Alverà

Renzo Alverà (born January 17, 1933 in Cortina d'Ampezzo ; † March 15, 2005 ibid) was an Italian bobsleigh athlete who won five world championship titles and two Olympic silver medals.

Renzo Alverà from the Bob Club Cortina started bobsleigh in 1953, the year before his brother Michael had participated in the Olympic Games. As early as 1954, Renzo Alverà won the first of his six Italian championship titles in the four-man bobsleigh . At the 1956 Olympic Games in his hometown, he was a push for Eugenio Monti . The competition in the two-man bobsleigh was won by Lamberto Dalla Costa and Giacomo Conti , with Monti and Alverà winning the silver medal one second behind the winners and six seconds ahead of the third placed. In the four-man bobsleigh, the Swiss bobsleigh of the pilot Franz Kapus won , with Monti, Ulrico Girardi , Alverà and Renato Mocellini taking silver in front of the US bobsleigh.

At the world championships in 1957 in St. Moritz , 1958 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , 1959 in St. Moritz and 1960 in Cortina, Monti and Alverà won. The two are the only team to win the two-man bobsleigh title four times in a row. In the four-man bobsleigh, the two finished second with Ferdinando Piani and Lino Pierdica in 1957. In 1960 they won the title with Furio Nordio and Sergio Siorpaes . With two world championship titles in 1960, Monti and Alverà showed that they would have been favored at the 1960 Olympic Games , if bobsleigh competitions had been held at the Olympic Games in Squaw Valley .

In the life after sport, Renzo Alverà was a gardener, he died of a stroke. In 2011, part of the Cortina d'Ampezzo bobsleigh track was named after Renzo Alverà.

Web links

• Renzo Alverà in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )