FABIO LUNELLI

Fabio Lunelli - Trento 19.12.1943

Here you come.

It is the beginning of December, just another few weeks and I will be able to see if you are like the image that I have formed of you in my mind in these last eight months. I tenderly stroke the belly that cradles you and smile at your mother who is anxiously preparing to welcome you, a new life which will totally transform ours.

Maybe, I should have calculated this better, but...

Yes, because you are arriving just a few days before the beginning of the Marcialonga. This year I will hang up my skis and ski poles so I can dedicate myself to you, baby food and nappies. I don't expect you to understand but missing the Marcialonga is a really huge tragedy for me! Laughing and joking I have taken part in everyone up to this one, it started as a game. It began for me because Val di Fassa is connected to indelible memories of my adolescence.
Your grandparents brought me to the mountain tops for long summer holidays, friends from there and friends that I met up with there, with whom I spent the summer days climbing and walking. You can understand why I couldn't say no when a leaflet arrived in Milan from the mountains, my old friends and I saw that they were signing people up to compete what was considered a prank. I had to be there. After the first one well...how could I not continue with the others?

Year after year we leave for the mountains and repeat everything. It has become almost reassuringly familiar. The starting shot, the storming 5000-including me, I'm there too, let me explain...pushing and shoving trying to get ahead, until we hear the championship of swear words, then the downhill slope of Mazzin where skis and ski poles fly and skiers fall head over heels. After that the church steeples of the Val di Fiemme one after another like mirages which accompany you to the last of the gruelling slopes. You think you can't possibly do it, maybe you should give up, then you get to the end. You always do.

Who knows if you will live this experience one day?
Maybe we will do it together. It would be good, wouldn't it, to get to the finishing line after 70 km of healthy fatigue, through beautiful scenery and elbowing to get through the famous narrow parts of the track, listening to the cheers of the crowd along the track. I will look at you proudly, knowing I am lucky to have shared some of the road with you, and it is something we can share forever. First of all, however, arrive! Then we will see if you like the snow.

25 December 1983

I wake up the house is silent. I realise it's Christmas morning. I'm excited just like when I was a kid, like when I tried to stay awake all night to catch a glimpse of the old man with the beard who brought the presents. I get up and instinctively head to the living room. The tree is in centre place. It is big this year, so big that we didn't have enough decorations and we had to hang up biscuits and gingerbread. I look at the presents, some are in piles one top of another around the base of the Christmas tree, (the ones that I put there, last night). Others are new. In between the those on the right, there is one that is too tall and too thin in to hide what is inside it, even if it is wrapped in light blue wrapping paper. I know what it is even before unwrapping it. My emotions are running high. They are skis. They are new cross country skis, with a card attached to them "Do what makes you happy, we will be here when you get back. Happy Marcialonga my love, you are going this year as well!"

Concept, interview and text: Susanna Sieff
Photo: Alice Russolo
Video: Graziano Bosin - Dolomiti TV

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