Cortina ready for Olympic and Paralympic challenge

In snow sports, two venues will stage action during both the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Cross-Country and Para Cross-Country Skiing are to be held at Val di Fiemme, while Cortina d’Ampezzo plays host to Alpine, Para Alpine Skiing, and Para Snowboard.

Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted the 1956 Olympic Winter Games and is a mainstay of the women’s FIS Alpine Ski World Cup circuit. The women will race there in February (the men are at Bormio), with all the Para Alpine Skiing competitions also taking place on the Olimpia delle Tofane. Para Snowboard will be contested on the San Zan slope in the Socrepes ski area just over a kilometre away.

Ahead of the three previous Olympic Winter Games - Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, and Beijing 2022 - new Alpine Ski centers were built from scratch specifically for the big event. While that allowed for special considerations to be implemented with the Paralympics in mind, the long-established Cortina d’Ampezzo resort has no such luxury.

Read on to find out more about Cortina d’Ampezzo, and how it will prepare to host both Alpine and Para Alpine skiers during the upcoming Games.

Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Queen of the Dolomites

When Cortina d’Ampezzo started to become a winter sports tourist destination at the end of the 19th century, it was known by its German name of Hayden. Ampezzo was then part of Austria-Hungary whose natives fought against Italy and the Allied Forces in World War I.

Victory for the Allied Forces saw Ampezzo ceded to Italy along with central and southern Tyrol. Hayden was then renamed Cortina d’Ampezzo, often shortened to Cortina. In the Ladin language local to Ampezzo, that is closely related to Romansh in Switzerland, Cortina means “enclosed or fenced area”.

Its growth as a ski resort translated to its establishment as a sporting venue with Cortina hosting the 1927 Nordic World Ski Championships and 1932 Alpine World Ski Championships. It also staged the 1941 Nordic and Alpine World Ski Championships, although these were later stripped of their official status by FIS as only athletes from Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and allies, and neutral countries, took part.

Having been scheduled to host the 1944 Olympic Winter Games, cancelled due to World War II, Cortina eventually did so in 1956 with the Olimpia delle Tofane making its competitive debut. Since the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup was launched in January 1967, it has staged more women’s races (104) than any other resort. Primarily a speed venue, Cortina has witnessed 45 Downhills, second only to Lake Louise (CAN), and a record 37 Super-Gs.

In 2021, Cortina again hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships with Vincent Kriechmayr (AUT) completing the men’s speed double. Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI) also won two golds, edging out Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) in the Giant Slalom to add to her Super-G success. Shiffrin had already taken bronze in the Super-G and gold in the Alpine Combined, but failed to win a fifth consecutive Slalom crown as Katharina Liensberger (AUT) took victory.

Elena Curtoni won the World Cup Super-G on the Olimpia delle Tofane four years ago. And the veteran, who turns 35 just before the Games, is very much looking forward to competing on home snow.

“Cortina for me is one of my favorite places to ski,” she said. “I have really good memories there, good races. I love colors and the colors there are amazing. It’s going to be special and emotional.

“I really like the slope. The energy when I get to the top is something special. It’s full of tricky parts and you need to be clean. It has everything and it’s a really complete test; you need to be good at turns, jumps and everything. I want to be myself on the slope, and if the result or even a medal follows then that would be good.”

Adapting to the needs of Alpine and Para Alpine Skiing

Matteo Gobbo has been Chief of Race at Cortina since the 2021 World Championships, and is Sport Manager for both Alpine and Para Alpine Skiing at the Olympic Winter Games. The 44-year-old hails from the town but, while he was a capable skier, ice hockey was his chosen sport and he played for the national junior team.

Soon after retiring from hockey in 2005 aged 25, Gobbo became part of the ski crew at Cortina. He started out as an assistant chief of section, eventually working his way up to be Chief of Race. He succeeded his childhood friend Francesco Ghedina, cousin of 13-time World Cup race winner Kristian Ghedina, in the role.

The Para Alpine Ski World Cup came to Cortina for the first time in mid-March 2023. Technical races in the World Cup Finals were staged there with Sella Nevea (ITA) hosting the speed disciplines. These races took place six weeks after the Alpine Ski World Cup came to town and presented “a big challenge” for Gobbo and his colleagues.

“We hosted the tech finals of the World Cup and that was a new world for us,” he admits. “Yes, we can prepare the course as for able-bodied skiers but they need some different things. For instance, the start area must be accessible, and they need a larger flat area to wait before the start.

“But it was really interesting. From the beginning, everyone in my team was motivated to do the best for the athletes. We lost a race due to rain at the end, but we had two Giant Slaloms and one slalom. After the last race, we had a really big party with the athletes, technicians, all my crew and it was great.”

At the end of January 2024, Downhill, Super-G and Slalom were contested on the Olimpia delle Tofane. Giacomo Bertagnolli secured a home win in the men’s Vision Impaired (VI) Downhill, before Sitting skier Renè De Silvestro followed suit in Super-G and Slalom.

“The test events for the speed disciplines in 2024 were a bit challenging, especially with the (Sitting) monoskis,” recalls Gobbo. “If an athlete crashes into the netting, there’s a lot of power in a very small area so we had to think about something different in terms of safety. But, in the end, they are really good skiers who can more or less do all the course.

“The Downhill starts at the same place as the able-bodied women with the Super-G on top of the Tofana Schuss. We need to pay attention to the profile of the slope because we cannot have as many bumps in a row - they need more space to react so we smooth it down a little - but it’s otherwise the same. We iced the course for the World Cup and two days later, the Paras were racing the Downhill without any problem.”

As far as preparations for the Paralympics go, Gobbo has everything in hand although the weather may make life more difficult. “After the Winter Olympics, we will have a transition period,” he says. “We’ll have to move the Slalom start so the Para position is more accessible for the athletes. We’ll rebuild the course because, after two weeks of Olympics, we’ll need to groom and prepare the profile and jumps and so on again.

“We’ll carry out safety maintenance, remove and replace B-nets, check the A-nets, and check everything’s in place. The biggest task will be in the finish area because we have to make it accessible for wheelchairs. We’ll use a rubber mat and prepare a corridor where the wheelchairs can go easily.

“March in Cortina could be very warm, you could have mad snow in the finish area, or really cold. I remember one March it was -12 degrees Celsius and you were running on concrete not snow. The snow becomes very wet and when the temperature drops so quickly, it freezes and becomes really hard. That’s the better situation for us, for sure. We prefer icy and cold to sunny and warm.”

Gobbo is confident his slope will be an appropriate venue for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, and there is nowhere else he would rather be. “Cortina is the most beautiful Alpine Ski venue in the world because you are in the heart of the Dolomites,” he claims. “The valley is unique because it's really long and wide - 12 kilometres long and more or less the same width. You have sun in all the seasons and that’s good became alpine valleys are normally quite narrow and in November and December you can see light but not sun.

“When you arrive early in the morning for the jury inspection, you go up slowly in the lift in the dark and then you see the sun when you’re on top. The rocks turn pink and the sky turns violet. Then in 10 minutes, you have sunshine and all the colors change. It’s amazing. Every year I take the same picture with the gate and the panel and all the valley behind. And after 20 years it's like the first time every time.

“The Olimpia delle Tofane is one of the most iconic courses on the World Cup circuit. All the people here are running around a lot to prepare everything to be ready for this big event. It’s a big challenge for everyone because the town is not that big and the road isn’t so easy to navigate.

“We have put several things in place to support the Olympic events, but also to leave a legacy for the future, for tourism, for all the systems in town. This is the best outcome from the Olympics. It’s just two weeks plus the Paralympics, but what’s important is what the Games will leave behind. I’m really proud to be part of that because I was born and grew up here. I’ve been lucky enough to travel around the Alps and Europe with sport and with friends and see many places, but Cortina is still my number one.”