Tomba back in Bosnia

Skiing

Italy's Alpine skiing champion Alberto Tomba travelled to Bosnia yesterday to promote the first peacetime slalom race in Sarajevo, where ski resorts were ripped apart during the long-running Balkan conflict.

Tomba said the "Slalom of Peace" on Mount Bjelasnica outside Sarajevo would be held on 23 December and pledged to bring 100 of the world's top skiers for the event. "With this competition, I want to show the world what has happened here," Tomba said.

Mount Bjelasnica, where Tomba competed in the World Cup in 1987, now features skeletons of ski lifts strewn on the mountain, and rubble where hotels were burned to the ground by the Bosnian Serb army in the summer of 1993.