DOUGH DREAMS.(The Talk of the Town)(George Giove)

George Giove, a twenty-nine-year-old journeyman pizzaiolo (Italian for "pizza guy"), competes for the United States Pizza Team. He made his name in the freestyle pizza toss, on the strength of his double-dough toss-and-spin moves (across the shoulders, behind the back, through the legs, the whip, and the kick-flip), and for the creativity and flair of his routine, which he performs to pop music. Giove has a compact, chesty build, salami-size forearms, and quick hands. He speaks in a mixture of Brooklynese (when his grandparents came to America with their three sons, in 1971, they opened a pizzeria in Borough Park) and Staten Islandese (when Giove was a kid, some relatives migrated across the Verrazano Narrows and opened a place called Brother's Pizza, in Port Richmond). Giove is also not afraid to exploit his Italian heritage to appeal to contest judges. At the U.S. Team Trials last year, which he won, he chose Toto Cutugno's soft-rock anthem "L'Italiano" (the chorus is "I am the Italian, the real Italian") for his freestyle routine. And at the World Pizza Championships, which are held annually in Salsomaggiore Terme, in northern Italy (the 2004 Worlds are this week), he won a bronze medal in the best-pizza-maker event--this was at the height of Operation Shock and Awe, when popular sentiment in Italy was strongly antiwar--for what he called his "pace" pie (pace is Italian for "peace"), which is topped with bacon, zucchini, and chunks of herb cream cheese.

For years, the Italians dominated the Worlds. Then came Tony Gemignani, a ponytailed Californian with wide-open, acrobatic New World moves. Gemignani won world titles in 2000 and 2001, before abruptly retiring from competition and signing on as the U.S. coach. Before Giove made the team, he logged hundreds of hours studying videotapes of Gemignani and attempting every move that he saw.

On Staten Island the other day, during the late-afternoon lull at Brother's, a handful of slice buyers lined up at the front counter, while a pre-teen birthday party and some old couples in tracksuits occupied the dining room in back. George Giove sat ...