When impossible becomes reality: Ambrogio Fogar
By Kyt Lyn Walken
Ambrofogar Minor Planet 25301 is the name of an asteroid discovered on December 7, 1998 by astronomers Maura Tombelli and Andrea Boattini.
Apparently, the reference (Ambrofogar) to the character in our article seems hazy. Why dedicate an asteroid to someone? Maybe it was captatio benevolentiae?
Quite the contrary. Ambrofogar Minor Planet 25301 is a way to pay homage, remembering it, to a man who has tried to be great, but with kindness and respect for the planet he loved so much.
The past is, alas, a must. Ambrogio Fogar passed away in Milan on August 24, 2005, completely paralyzed. The shadow of the man he was.
A car accident in Turkmenistan led him to that state in 1992.
Let me say that this affair affects me closely: in the 1980s my father, in fact, was a big fan of athletics and ran all the possible marathons. His training took place regularly at the Giuriati Sports Center, in the Città Studi area of Milan. With Fogar my dad shared chats, impressions, training sessions. I remember that kind man with a thick mustache and always smiling eyes. And I want to remember it still this way, because if, about ten years later, that terrible accident had crystallized him in a single, eternal position, he still could not tame those eyes.
In his own way, Ambrogio Fogar was a conqueror. Who is the son of the eighties will remember his Jonathan-Dimensione Avventura television program, aired on Canale 5 from 1984 and then on Italia 1 until 1991. He was one who knew how to do it, Fogar. He knew how to involve without being boring, and he knew how to bewitch without arousing envy, but only the desire to get to know Nature more deeply, to feel part of his travels and businesses.
As the Latins would have said, how many Res gestae have dotted his life. Climbing the Alps, aerobatic flights, various regattas on the Mediterranean, a solo translatalantic. And again: circumnavigation of the globe in complete solitude, months spent in Alaska, Greenland, Himalaya to be able to subsequently conquer the North Pole on foot in the company of the trusted Siberian Husky Armaduk.
A life made up of goals, stages, dreams that come true thanks to tenacity, intensive training, and also to that ability not to succumb to disasters. Since this section is dedicated to amazing (yes, it is necessary to use this term) survival stories, it is right, in the reconstruction of the life of this great Italian explorer, to outline what happened.
1977. Fogar, in the company of his friend and travel journalist Mauro Mancini, is on the “Surprise” boat when a flock of killer whales or whales, near the Falklands, hits the boat and makes it sink. The two find themselves on a self-inflating life raft with what cannot be defined as real stocks: sugar and bacon. But they manage to kill two cormorants and collect rainwater.
This was for 74 days, until a Greek merchant spotted them and rescued them.
They both lost 40 kg each. Mancini does not survive and soon dies of pneumonia.
The diary of that harrowing story is all contained in the good book that Fogar wrote the following year “La zattera“, (Rizzoli, 1978). Far be it from me to recommend a book whose intent is to speculate on a misfortune. But the book in question is truly an honest and touching account, capable of making people think, angry, indignant and moved together. In short, what a good manuscript usually manages to do, giving a truthful image of the facts and people involved.
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