Dodo Gorla and the Snipe

Editor's note: Dodo Gorla is one of the best Italian sailors of all time and a true sportsman. By Giorgio "Dodo" Gorla I was born on Lake Orta (North-West of Italy), in a house right on the water; that's why I've always been very familiar with everything aquatic. Long childhood summers on the lake always included sailing; we had an old "Snipe" and we used to guess the the number of buckets of water it would take to empty it. The Snipe was actually the only sailing boat on Lake Orta. It was very widespread, and every Sunday there were races with at least twenty boats. My dad dreamed of an Olympic future for me in any sport (sometimes certain dreams do come true), and in 1954 he asked a shipwright and boatman from Orta, Giovanni Anchisi, to build a beautiful Snipe in larch called Dodo II (9984). She was fast in light wind and the small waves of the lake, but I will never know the truth, because at that time we were also small and very light. My crews, and also my childhood friends, were Roberto Picchio with whom I won the Italian Junior Nationals in 1963, and Archimede Dal Grande; we won the Italian national championship in 1966. Both were very good with manual skills, just like my old faithful crew on the Star Alfio Peraboni. All of them compensated for my chronic shortages as a boat rigger. ...

Dodo Gorla and the Snipe Image

Editor’s note: Dodo Gorla is one of the best Italian sailors of all time and a true sportsman.

By Giorgio “Dodo” Gorla

I was born on Lake Orta (North-West of Italy), in a house right on the water; that’s why I’ve always been very familiar with everything aquatic. Long childhood summers on the lake always included sailing; we had an old “Snipe” and we used to guess the the number of buckets of water it would take to empty it.

The Snipe was actually the only sailing boat on Lake Orta. It was very widespread, and every Sunday there were races with at least twenty boats. My dad dreamed of an Olympic future for me in any sport (sometimes certain dreams do come true), and in 1954 he asked a shipwright and boatman from Orta, Giovanni Anchisi, to build a beautiful Snipe in larch called Dodo II (9984). She was fast in light wind and the small waves of the lake, but I will never know the truth, because at that time we were also small and very light.

My crews, and also my childhood friends, were Roberto Picchio with whom I won the Italian Junior Nationals in 1963, and Archimede Dal Grande; we won the Italian national championship in 1966. Both were very good with manual skills, just like my old faithful crew on the Star Alfio Peraboni. All of them compensated for my chronic shortages as a boat rigger.

1959ancoraCIJuniores1My sailing idols were the great Snipe sailors of those days: Mario Capio, 1955 World champion with the Snipe Portorose, which was built by Danilo D’Isiot; Pierino Reggio, Mino Della Casa, Vittorio Porta, and, among the lake sailors, Luciano Brambilla who was the owner of Portorose and had loaned her to Capio for the World Championship.

Among the juniors sailors the undisputed champion was Giorgio Brezich, with Ostoich as crew; together they dominated the championships in which they participated (Photo on the left: 1959 Italian Junior Nationals. From left to right: Ostoich. Gorla, Brezich, Picchio).

The great Snipe regattas were in September on Lake Maggiore, in Stresa and then in Luino, where every year there were eighty boats and all the greatest champions; there, sometimes, in a race with light wind, we were able to get some great results, without even knowing how!
In 1960, when I was 16, my father asked Leopoldo Colombo di Cadenabbia (whose sons now run a famous boatyard that builds the wooden Dinghy12) to build a beautiful plywood Snipe, which was called Dodo III (12124).

IMG 1480In 1966, Archimede and I won the Italian Nationals in Bellano (Lake Como), in front of the legendary team Morin-Michel. I believe we were the youngest champions in the history of the Italian Snipe Class and it was also the first win for the Colombo boatyard. We had an aluminum Proctor mast that Bruno Tomasoni, a leader in Italian sailing equipment imports, gave me to test. Our sails were made by Fragnière, a Swiss Snipe champion and two-time European champion, who also bet on me.

So in that wonderful summer of 1966, we qualified for my first European Championship in Karlshamm, Sweden. On the way we stopped in Copenhagen to see a very windy race at the 505 World Championship, with the great Elvstrom (who had been world champion even in the Snipe). We finished 6th, despite retiring from the last race after a luff by the Swedish team; in those days, when protested we retired, but it was another century!

From that trip I developed my great desire to race on an Olympic boat, and in 1967 I moved to the Finn, abandoning the Snipe that had represented my happy sporting youth.

In July 1970, I saw Dodo III, my beautiful boat, on the Lido of Venice. I was in Venice because I had married Caterina, who was from there. On September 11, 1970 the Venetian sailing club Diporto Velico Veneziano was completely destroyed by a terrible whirlwind that hit Sant’Elena and unfortunately also caused 21 victims.

Editor’s Note: Dodo went on to become one of the “big names” in the Star Class with Alfio Peraboni, winning 2 bronze Olympic medals (Tallin 1980 and Long Beach 1984) and finishing fifth at Busan in 1988. They were also World Champions in 1984 (Vilamoura, Portugal) and won bronze at the 1980 Worlds. At the Star European Championships, Gorla and Peraboni won gold in 1985, silver in 1986, and bronze medals in 1979, 1980 and 1982.

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