James Bond Stuntman Recalls Skiing Down Italian Bobsled Track in 'For Your Eyes Only'

It is still remembered as one of the most thrilling and memorable sports action sequences across six decades of James Bond Films.

Italian stuntman Giovanni Dibona evaded the pursuit of black-clad assassins on motorcycles, while careening down the sweeping curves of the Olympic bobsled track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in the 1981 Bond classic For Your Eyes Only. 

It was part of a daring and intricately designed skiing sequence that began at the 1956 Olympic ski jump, continued at high speed down the sunny slopes and through forests of the Italian resort, and culminated in an edge-of-your-seat climax as 007 successfully navigated the icy banked turns of the historic track. The scene closes as the lead villain, an East German biathlete and KGB operative, crashes into hay bales and then, in desperation, tosses his rifle and Yamaha XT 500 motorbike towards Bond.

The riveting four-minute-plus scene was directed by German Olympic skier and fashion designer Willy Bogner Jr., while Dibona, now 82, was among three stuntmen who skied down the Italian bobsled track. 

“It was amazing working on a sports film with Roger Moore, director Willy Bogner, and with a very good team of skiing stuntmen,” Dibona tells POWDER, in an interview in Cortina d’Ampezzo. “I did some stunts, but not the riskiest ones because I was already 40 at that time.

“I was the first one that jumped into the track. I was a good skier back then, but still, if you’ve never done something like that before, it was all pretty exciting.” Dibona, who won Italian national titles in the mid-1960s and raced internationally, performed the stunt on a pair of Rossignol 210 cm skis.

Bogner developed an ingenious filming strategy in which he was attached to a bobsled by a winch, enabling him to film the sled from in front or behind, and used a pair of skis that allowed him to ski forward and backward to ascertain the best shots. 

“The bobsleds coming down were too fast, so we had to attach ourselves with nylon wires; otherwise, they would get too far ahead,” Dibona recalls. “We tried many different things everyday. It was intense at times. “Willy decided everything with the skiing stunts through the woods and down the bobsled track. The only way for us to stop was to ski all the way down to the bottom of the track.”

Watch the iconic scene below. Keep reading for more from Giovanni Dibona.

A Top Notch Stunt Crew

Dibona fondly recalled his tight-knit stunt team of skiers, led by second-unit director Bogner and including German Wolfgang Juninger and Canadian John Eaves, all of whom shared the dangerous work. They were fully committed and took substantial risks to make Bond actor Roger Moore appear invincible. 

“Every night back at the hotel, we reviewed what we filmed that day to make sure everything looked okay,” Dibona informs. “Then we went out to dinners with Roger and his wife. It was a very nice experience. Roger was very quiet, calm, and a very nice person.”

Dibona noted that he was paid half a million Italian Lira per day for his work, roughly $600, every day for one month. However, Dibona and the crew’s enthusiasm turned somber as tragedy struck on the final day of filming the chase. One of the stuntman drivers, 23-year-old Paolo Rigon, was killed when he crashed a sled off the track. The incident came just one week after U.S. bobsledder James Morgan also died in Cortina while competing at the 1981 World Championships.

The accident led to a modification of the track for future competitions.

Filming in the Italian Dolomites resort took place in January and February 1981, and ‘For Your Eyes Only’ premiered in the US and Canada in June. The film grossed $54.8 million in the US and Canada, equivalent to $190 million in 2024 dollars. Worldwide, it grossed approximately $195 million against a $28 million budget, becoming the second-highest-grossing Bond film at that time, after its predecessor, Moonraker.

A New Era for the Cortina Olympic Track

Having been closed since 2008, the historic Cortina d’Ampezzo bobsled track was recently demolished and completely rebuilt, at a staggering cost of 118 million Euros. It will once again be thrust into the international spotlight as the sliding venue for February’s Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games. The return of world-class athletes to the renovated venue has sparked renewed interest in the sport in Cortina and across northern Italy.

“They’ve created a very nice international track with great technical success for people to once again come and train here,” Dibona said.

Men’s and women’s Olympic bobsleigh events will happen between February 15 and 22, 2026, at the new Eugenio Monti Olympic Sliding Center. Unlike in the earlier days of the venue, skeleton and luge events will also be contested.

Queried by POWDER if he would once again be up for the challenge of skiing down Cortina’s 17 curves and 1,745 meters of the newly designed track for the next Bond film, Dibona responds, perhaps joking, with confidence just like it was 1981.

“A lot of people here in Cortina were congratulating me back then. I think I could probably do it again,” Dibona says, with a smile.

As one of 007’s enemies famously said: “You only live twice, Mr. Bond.”