Now, though, he faces different and some would say much more perilous contests altogether, taking on two jobs that make him yet more prominent in Italian life than running Ferrari, a company that combines the status of a national icon with a rare story of business success.
The contest was both more perilous and, in the looking-glass world of the cold war, more safe when both camps acquired nuclear weapons of great destructive power.
The contest for Minakh is perilous, and the rebels' success at Taftanaz has cut both ways, because now that the government does not need to defend that airfield it can shift more attack aircraft to sorties to Minakh and the surrounding towns, where rebels have clustered for the fight.
That could be perilous because many of the coming contests are in states like New York, where, unlike Michigan, only registered Republicans can participate.
But equally perilous rivalries seem renascent in the fundamental contest of the euro crisis between (German-led) proponents of hard work and austerity and those who plead for less individual pain.
These are perilous times.
The perilous speed remains.
