27 February 1988, Sanremo, Ariston Theatre. Miguel Bosé and Gabriella Carlucci, the two presenters of the evening most awaited by the Italians, do not for a moment announce a new singer ready to descend the iconic staircase that has made musical history. They too are watching the second run of the Special Slalom in Nakiska, Canada, where Alberto Tomba has to make up a handful of seconds on the strong German skier Frank-Christian Worndl. Tomba, who had easily won the gold medal in the Giant Slalom just a few days earlier, skied down the Canadian slopes with the power and class that earned him the nickname La Bomba. At the finish, the positions were reversed and Worndl came within a whisker of the blue skier. He was fast, very fast indeed. But not fast enough. Alberto Tomba triumphs again, he is still a gold medallist, still an Olympic champions. A few hours later, Massimo Ranieri will also win with "Perdere l'amore", but in the meantime, millions of Italians have discovered their love for Italian skiing and its most colourful and successful skier. Alberto Tomba, who with his easy-going manner represented not only sporting excellence, but also a way of life, an Italianness that still fascinates and conquers. That is why we have chosen him as the new protagonist of More Than.

“What can I say? Maybe it was better if I stopped the last editions than the one back then", Alberto Tomba plays the usual slalom as always, even between questions. «In '88 I was lucky that the special slalom fell exactly on a Saturday evening, during the final in Sanremo. Carlucci and Bosè shouted on stage: 'Everybody stop, Alberto Tomba is coming down' It's a good thing I won back then, otherwise the newspapers would have been all over me. I hadn't realised that twenty million Italians were sitting in front of their screens at that moment. Afterwards, I realised what I had done: I called my mum with those huge phones from back then: “Here's delirium, there are queues for miles to get to the gate of the house.” Tomba-Mania, the Albertite, was born that February of 1988.» On the Calgary slopes, the skier from Bologna, who was born in the city and not on the Alps peaks, thrilled with that dash of imagination and bravado that many of his colleagues or opponents could only dream of. He, the martian who came to skiing almost playfully, “unlike someone born at two to three thousand metres, I already had something else as a child, the desire to excel in a sport",” had become a national idol.