Skiing: Photographer claims Tomba threw bottle

There was trouble for Alberto Tomba following a World Cup race in Alta Badia, Italy, yesterday when he clashed angrily with a photographer who sold nude photographs of him taken in a sauna in 1988 to a magazine last summer.

Photographers said Tomba, who had finished third in a giant slalom, threw a bottle of wine at Aldo Martinuzzi and then during the podium ceremony aimed a glass trophy at him, which cut Martinuzzi on the hand. He said he was considering taking legal action against Tomba.

Tomba , an officer in the carabinieri (police), insisted afterwards that he was merely throwing the bottle in the air as he has done before and that he had thrown the trophy to his sister in the crowd. "I didn't want to hurt him," Tomba said. "Someone jogged my elbow. It's strange that it should have hit him. It was unfortunate."

Results, Sporting Digest, page 22