Piero Gros
Gros c. 1973
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| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Born |
30 October 1954 (age 62) Sauze d'Oulx, Italy |
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| Height | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 77 kg (170 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Alpine skiing | ||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Sci Club Sauze D'Oulx, GS Fiamme Gialle |
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Medal record
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Piero Gros (born 30 October 1954) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from northwestern Italy. He won the gold medal in slalom at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, and was the World Cup overall champion in 1974.
Gros was born at Sauze d'Oulx, in the province of Turin in the Piedmont region. He learned to ski at an early age, thanks to Aldo Monaci and Aldo Zulian. At the age of 8, he was for the first time on the podium of local race. Gros made his debut in the World Cup at age 18 in December 1972. In that 1973 season, he won two races in Val d'Isère and Madonna di Campiglio; he was the youngest Italian skier ever to win a World Cup race. Two years later he won the overall title, sharing this result in Italy only with his friend and rival Gustav Thöni and with Alberto Tomba. Thöni had won the overall title the three preceding seasons and would reclaim it in 1975; he was the runner-up in 1974, and if not for Gros, would've won an unthinkable five consecutive overall titles. Gros also won the bronze medal in the giant slalom at the 1974 World Championships in St. Moritz.
His most notable and best result was the gold medal in the slalom at the 1976 Winter Olympics: he preceded the silver medalist Thöni, in the most successful race ever for Italy at the Winter Olympics. According to Gros, that race was also significant in which he defeated the then almost unbeatable Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden, to which Gros had been second for six times in that 1976 World Cup season. Gros won another world championship medal in 1978, taking silver in slalom. Stenmark's dominance was the major factor in Gros' limited success in the late 1970s.
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