In his mind’s eye, the Italian ski village of Cortina d’Ampezzo is as fresh and clear as it was 70 years ago during the Opening Ceremonies of the 1956 Winter Olympics — when Marv Melville sat with the United States Olympic team and watched the man carrying the torch fall on his way to lighting the cauldron.
Guido Caroli was his name, the Italian national speedskating champion who had been selected to run the final leg of the torch’s ceremonial journey. The plan was for him to skate a lap around the Olympic stadium before lighting the cauldron. All was going as scripted … until Guido didn’t see the microphone cable left dangling on the track.
Marv smiles nostalgically at the memory. He’s a man who smiles easily, despite the blood cancer he’s currently battling two weeks from his 91st birthday.
He manages to smile at the memory of his own fall in Cortina, too.
He was halfway down the Olympic downhill course called Olympia delle Tofane — the same course the women downhillers will use for this year’s Games — when he crashed.
“I hit the road and just blew up, tore the binding right out of the ski so I couldn’t continue,” says Marv, who was one of four Americans entered in the race that day. Only one of them, Buddy Werner, managed to finish, placing 11th.
When Marv says “road,” he literally means road. A lack of snow in the Dolomites that year left the slopes bare, requiring soldiers in the Italian army to shovel snow out of the trees just to cover the course. Any deviation off the main track meant trouble. Like Marv, half the field fell down.
He’s been asked to tell the story of his Olympic race, and his experiences in Italy, a lot this winter, on account of the Games returning to Cortina for the first time in seven decades.
Marv’s path to the first Cortina Olympics was paved during the preceding winter of 1954-55, when he compiled enough points in designated Olympic-qualifying races to make the U.S. alpine team, finishing fourth out of the eight men selected.
But for the real beginning, you have to go back to 1945, months after the end of World War II, when he was 10 years old and his dad, Alton, bought each of them a pair of used skis at the Army-Navy surplus store on State Street.
Turning the massive 7-foot, 3-inch skis was nigh on impossible, remembers Marv, “so at first I didn’t like it. I was miserable.”
But Alton wasn’t one to give up, so neither was Marv, and by the time he got to Granite High School and started winning local junior races, he’d discovered a natural affinity for downhill skiing.
The first inkling he might be talented enough for the Olympics came on a ski trip to Alta with his high school teammate and friend, Mike Reddish. Mike’s older brother, Jack, joined them that day. Jack Reddish had skied in both the 1948 and 1952 Winter Olympics.
“I remember thinking, ‘I can ski almost as well as he can,’” says Marv. “It triggered something inside. That was probably the first thought I had of making an Olympic team.”
His trip to Cortina was everything he thought it would be. He met the rest of the U.S. team in New York, got fitted with an Olympic outfit (it’s now in the Alf Engen Ski Museum in Park City), flew to Europe and went straight to the Kastle ski factory in Austria for two pairs of skis.
“I got a uniform, skis and a badge,” says Marv. “I thought, ‘This is the life.’”
Alton and Verna, Marv’s mom, also made the trip.
Crashing in the downhill — Marv’s only race in Cortina — was disappointing, but he found some solace when he remained in Europe for what today would be called the World Cup circuit and placed fourth in a race in St. Moritz — one place in front of a promising young French skier named Jean-Claude Killy.
“My best race,” beams Marv, who then adds, “and then the following week I broke my leg.”
He spent the next month in a Swiss hospital before packing up his Olympic memories and finally coming home.
Marv would go on to much more ski racing glory. He was a perennial All-American skiing for the University of Utah, winning NCAA titles in the slalom and combined events in 1959. He finished fourth in the U.S. national championships that same year. He competed on the U.S. national team in the 1958 FIS world championships in Austria, and capped his career at the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California, placing 22nd in the downhill.
After that, he was on Bob Beattie’s coaching staff for the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck and coached three seasons at the University of Utah.
Skiing has never stopped being a big part of Marv’s life. He skied, and won, on the master’s racing circuit for years. And last winter, when he skied at Alta shortly after turning 90, marked his ninth straight decade on the slopes.
But the cancer, and a lack of snow, has kept him sidelined this winter. Alas, when the Olympics return to Cortina on Feb. 6, Marv won’t be there in person. But he will be glued to his TV, watching to see if there’s enough snow for the women on the Olympia delle Tofane, and how the cauldron gets lit.