The Italian ski world is in mourning for the death, which occurred this morning in a road accident, of Mirko Lupo Olcelli, a resident of Valdisotto (Sondrio), a leading athlete of the Italian youth ski mountaineering teams.
He lost his life, in upper Valtellina, a few minutes before 9 a.m., in the crash between the car he was driving, a Lancia Y, and a Toyota off-road vehicle that was proceeding in the opposite direction along the state road 300 of the Gavia Pass in Valfurva, not far from the town hall.
He was 18 years old and a student. According to the first investigations of the military of the Carabinieri Company of Tirano, the cause of the accident may have been the road asphalt made particularly treacherous by the presence of a layer of frozen snow. According to the reconstruction, the car driven by the young sportsman from Valtellina swerved and invaded the lane on which the other car was coming. The Valdisotto Fire Brigade intervened on the spot.
The 118 doctors rescued the boy's 16-year-old girlfriend, who was traveling with him, and suffered a chest trauma: she was taken to hospital in Sondalo for treatment. The driver of the off-road vehicle was unharmed.
"A very serious bereavement has struck the world of ski mountaineering in the Central Alps today," reads the note released today by the Italian Winter Sports Federation (FISI). Due to a road accident, shortly before 9 a.m. today, December 18, Mirko Lupo Olcelli, 18, an athlete of the Alta Valtellina Ski Club, the Central Alps and the Italian Under 20 national ski mountaineering team, lost his life.
"Last weekend - recalled in tears Cristina Andreola, president of the Alta Valtellina Ski Club to which the victim belonged - Olcelli had participated in San Martino di Castrozza in the mixed relay of the Italian Youth Cup finished in fifth place, and in the first weeks of competitions he had achieved good placements in the World Cup of the category".
The Italian Winter Sports Federation, President Flavio Roda and the Federal Council rally around the Olcelli family in these hours of great sorrow. The boy, a true promise of Italian ski mountaineering, at the beginning of December had defended the blue colors on the French snows of Meribel. And once he finished high school, he wanted to devote himself full-time to his sporting passion.
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