Roger Moore managed it with aplomb. In a thrilling James Bond escape, with sublime dexterity and agility, Moore as 007, went off-piste to evade the enemy agents once again.
Actually, it was a skilled stunt professional that handled the high-speed chases and risky manoeuvres but the Hollywood blockbuster, For Your Eyes Only, added greatly to the glamorous allure of winter sports.
A chunk of that movie was filmed at Cortina D'Ampezzo known as 'the Queen of the Dolomites’.
Now this prestigious, high-end, Italian ski resort has, once again, been catapulted into the global spotlight. Some 45 years after the suave Bond zig-zagged through the trees, Cortina will be the scene of the 25th edition of the Winter Olympics.
The games are set to be the most geographically demanding in history, with some 410km, or five hours driving, between the two main focal points - Milan, where the Olympic flame will be lit at the iconic San Siro stadium for the opening ceremony, and Cortina.
Over the course of two-and-a-half weeks, athletes in 16 sports will compete in events at 25 venues.
The Winter Olympics took place in Cortina once before, in 1956. Now 70 years on, it is again preparing for some of the marquee names from the skiing world to test themselves on the notoriously difficult slopes.
Team Ireland will have four competitors in action in Italy: skiers Cormac Comerford and Anabelle Zurbay, Ben Lynch who goes in the half-pipe event and cross-country skier Thomas Maloney Westgard.
It will be the third Winter Olympics for Maloney Westgard, affectionately nicknamed in some quarters as "The Galwegian Norwegian".
"What an honour to represent Ireland again, it’s a dream come true," Maloney Westgard said.
"It’s the pinnacle of the athletes' sports, especially in cross country skiing.
"Olympics is almost everything. You feel like you’re putting so much work into this and just to be here representing Ireland, yeah, it’s fantastic."
He is glad to have a bit of experience under his belt, he concedes.
"For sure experience is everything, I feel more experienced but at the same time, the most important thing is to be relaxed, keep your shoulders down and don’t stress too much because I feel like you perform better when you are calm and collected. For sure I’ll try to approach it the same way."
"Beijing Olympics was fantastic for me," recalls Maloney Westgard, when he finished 14th in the 15k event.
This time round, he dreams of a personal best but acknowledges it will be difficult, adding: "But this is why we put so much effort into this."
In total, there will be over 2, 800 athletes from 93 different nations competing across 16 different sports at the Milan Cortina games.
Nancy Chillingworth, who is Team Ireland’s Chef de Mission, describes this as an exciting team with a mix of three first-time Olympians and the ‘elder statesman’ of the team - though still very young - Thomas Maloney Westgard.
"There’s a lot to look forward to across alpine, freestyle skiing and cross country in the coming weeks and we are looking forward to supporting them across the different locations," she said.
While Team Ireland accounts for a small but select field, other countries with a stronger winter sports heritage have arrived with big numbers and big ambitions.
Team USA numbers 232 athletes among them some of the biggest names of Winter Olympic sport.
Skier Lynsey Vonn has come out of retirement to command much of the media spotlight in the countdown to these games. A high-speed crash in a recent World Cup event saw her air-lifted to hospital, putting her participation in doubt.
At 41 years of age, Vonn will compete in her fifth Olympic games. The one-time girlfriend of Tiger Woods has defied the odds by getting to Milano-Cortina.
Having undergone a partial knee replacement in 2024, she impressively re-established herself as one of the best speed skiers in the world.
Vonn would be aiming to go out on a high, despite her severe ACL injury, having previously said: "There’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back and it’s pulled me back one last time."
Watch out, too, for emotive scenes around another member of Team USA, figure stater Maxim Naumov. Both his parents died tragically in a plane crash in Washington last year.
Naumov’s ascent from outside contender to Olympic certainty, while grieving his parents, has deservingly been the focus of many column inches in recent weeks.
Naumov’s parents, who had been renowned coaches at a high profile Skating Club in Massachusetts, were among 67 people killed - more than two dozen of them members of the figure skating community - when an American Airlines Flight crashed into a military helicopter on approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport and fell into the Potomac River last January.
Meanwhile, more than three decades after the film Cool Runnings, Jamaica is, once again, sending a bobsleigh team to the Olympics.
At the Beijing games in 2022 the Russian team numbered more than 200, this time there are 13 Russians competing, but all will be participating under the Individual Neutral Athlete banner, as was done at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Times change but the Olympic spirit lives on. In the days ahead, Team Ireland will hope for more than just a rub of the green on the pristine white and hotly contested Italian slopes.
