BORMIO, Italy (AP) — The weekend’s ski racing in Bormio showed precisely why the men’s downhill for the 2026 Olympics will be one of the toughest in the past 30 years.
American skier Bryce Bennett says he has “trauma” from racing down the fearsome Stelvio slope, while Italian veteran Christof Innerhofer — who has competed at four Olympics — can’t remember a tougher course.
The difficulty was highlighted by a number of crashes during the World Cup weekend and three skiers had to be airlifted to a hospital — including French standout Cyprien Sarrazin, who needed surgery to drain bleeding on the brain.
The Milan-Cortina Olympics will see the Games return to Europe after the three previous editions were held in Russia, South Korea and China. The men’s Alpine skiing events will take place in Bormio, while the women’s will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo. The two ski areas are separated by a five-hour car ride.
“For sure will be special because the last Olympic Games was far away from here,” said the 40-year-old Innerhofer, who won silver and bronze in the downhill and combined, respectively, in Sochi in 2014.
“In the past 12 or 16 years you’ve had some really tough slope like Sochi, some easier slope like Korea, some medium slope like China. But this one will be a tough one. This will be the toughest one I think for the last 30 years.”
Unrelenting, knee-rattling, complicated by shaded sections and producing speeds touching 140 kph (87 mph), the Stelvio is a notoriously unforgiving track.
“Here it’s really the limit,” Innerhofer said. “Nobody can imagine how difficult to ski down: with the light, with the speed, with the bumps, with the jumps.”
It is one of the most physically demanding on the circuit, at almost 3,230 meters long with a 986-meter vertical drop and a maximum gradient of 63%.
“I remember growing up and like, old guys would just not come here. And now I get older and I … get it,” said the 32-year-old Bennett, who finished fourth in a downhill in 2018 in Bormio, but hasn’t finished inside the top 30 on the Stelvio since.
“It’s like I just have had such bad feelings here the last three years and I haven’t quite been able to shake it. I would call it like trauma almost a little bit. And so I’m trying to work through it. It’s like you got to take risk in the right way and be confident in the skiing and the feeling and it’s just hard to find here for me at the moment.”
The downhill is an event so speedy and dangerous to begin with that it’s the only one where athletes usually are given two opportunities to take practice runs before a race.
It was on Friday's second training run that Sarrazin had his crash, leading his teammate Nils Allègre to lambast organizers, saying “they don’t know how to prepare a course.”
He even went as far as to add “they don’t deserve to have the Olympic Games here.”
Race director Omar Galli refuted those claims and highlighted that the organizers have “significantly upgraded safety features” and will further enhance those for the Olympics.
Three-time defending overall champion Marco Odermatt was more diplomatic about the difficulties of the slope.
“The Stelvio is like a constant fight for survival,” the reigning downhill champion said. “The big problem: 80% of the course is completely icy; 20% consists of aggressive snow.
“This irregularity makes it difficult to do the right thing with the skis. Yes, it is a fight for survival from start to finish.”
The major advantage the Olympics will have over the World Cup is that the events in Bormio will take place in February and not in December.
That will help with the uniformity of the slope and, more importantly, the notoriously dark Stelvio piste will be mostly in the sun.
The last time it was raced in February was at the 2005 world championships, where the downhill finished in an American one-two after Daron Rahlves finished runner-up to Bode Miller.
“I am excited to ski this in the sun,” Bennett said. “It’s so dark. So having a little bit of light on the course, I think it will be fun to ski and I’ve heard that from former athletes, like Bode and Daron. They’re like ‘it’s easy in the sun!’ I don’t think it’s easy, but it’s easier than it is.”
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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
Daniella Matar, The Associated Press
