Career
He is one of the most successful athletes in the history of this sport, with ten World championship medals (of which nine gold) and 6 Olympic medals including two golds. Monti switched to bobsleigh, finding great success as a result. He could not compete in the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, because the bobsled race was not held for economic reasons (for the only time in the history of the Winter Olympic Games).
But it was during the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck that Monti performed the best-known act of his sporting career.
Realizing that British bobsledders Tony Nash and Robin Dixon had broken a bolt on their sled, Monti lent them the bolt off his sled. There, the Canadian team of Vic Emery had damaged their sled"s axle and would have been disqualified had not Monti and his mechanics come to the rescue.
After his victory, he received Italy"s highest civilian honor – the Commendatore of the Italian Republic and then retired to labor in his skiing facilities in Cortina. Suffering from Parkinson"s disease, Monti committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on December 1, 2003.
Turn 19 at Cesana Pariol, the site of the 2006 Winter Olympic bobsled, luge, and skeleton competitions, was named for Monti.
The bobsleigh track that Monti competed on for years in Cortina was renamed in his honor following his 2003 death. Olympic Games FIBT World Championships.