A hill to fly on
Athletes, from Mikaela Shiffrin to Sofia Goggia, express their love for the downhill courses of Milan-Cortina
Two years after a disappointing Winter Olympics in Beijing, Mikaela Shiffrin couldn’t be happier with the location of the 2026 event.
Women’s skiing in 2026 is slated for Milan-Cortina, and the resort known as the “Queen of the Dolomites”, where Shiffrin won four medals in four events at the 2021 world championships.
Shiffrin also made a breakthrough in Cortina back in 2017, when she cracked the top five of a speed event for the first time by finishing fourth in a super-G.
In all, Shiffrin has recorded six podium results in 13 career races in Cortina. So, after she didn’t medal in any of her six races in Beijing — and didn’t finish three of her five individual events — she has good reason to be optimistic.
“I love Cortina in general,” Shiffrin said ahead of three speed races on the Olympia delle Tofane course over the weekend.
“It’s been a place where I’ve had a really good feeling on my skis, and I feel comfortable on the track. That’s really helpful, because it takes a little bit less mental energy to memorize all the bits and pieces of the course,” Shiffrin added. “For me, the hardest thing with downhill and super-G — just with speed in general — is the factor of memorizing all of the terrain.”
That being said, the course still throws up a few surprises for her, as it turned out on Friday, as Shiffrin hurt her left leg while crashing out of Friday’s downhill.
She will also miss the giant slalom at Kronplatz on Tuesday, the last race in this Italian swing of the World Cup season.
But a small setback won’t prevent Shiffrin from loving this place. And it’s not just Shiffrin.
Weaving its way down the mountain through jagged peaks and chutes, and usually bathed in sunshine, the Tofane course is a joy to ski for all.
“It’s a natural course through the forest,” said Federica Brignone, three-time Olympic medalist and the 2020 overall World Cup champion. “It moves in sync with the mountain, so you don’t need to worry about the gates; it’s more about following the twisting path of the course.”
Fellow Italian Sofia Goggia, the circuit’s leading downhill skier, added that Cortina hosting the Olympics will represent the “apotheosis of skiing.”
Ledecka’s appeal
Ester Ledecka, the Czech skier and snowboarder, has mixed emotions over the venue plan for 2026 — which spreads competitions over a wide swath of northern Italy.
Cortina is home to not one, but two of her favorite hills. She finished third in a downhill ski race on the Tofane course in 2022, and has won five parallel giant slaloms in World Cup snowboarding across the valley in the Faloria area of Cortina.
But, snowboarding for the MilanCortina Games will be held in Livigno, which is a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Cortina.
“I would like to convince them to hold it here, because it’s a really nice hill, and it would be easier for me,” said Ledecka, who became the first competitor to win gold in two different sports at the same Winter Games when she triumphed in super-G and parallel GS at Pyeongchang in 2018. She then won another gold in snowboarding in Beijing.
Not expecting a change, Ledecka instead plans to rely on her sponsor for transport.
“I have Red Bull, so it’s OK,” she said. “They have some helicopters.”
Next milestone
Last season, Shiffrin broke Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 86 wins to become the most successful skier in World Cup history. Now, with 95 victories, she’s approaching the century mark.
Yet, having seen Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, her boyfriend, and Petra Vlhova, her biggest rival, go down with season-ending crashes over the past two weekends, Shiffrin isn’t looking too far ahead.
“I don’t take it for granted,” she said. “The only guarantee I have is that I already have 95 wins. I cannot guarantee another. I can’t guarantee a 96th win, let alone a 100th.
“It’s closer than I would have thought if you asked me at the beginning of last season, or even at the beginning of this season, but it’s still far enough away, and five wins is no small task.”
Village questions
While skiers are more than familiar with Cortina, questions remain for 2026 amid a standoff between local organizers and the International Olympic Committee over where to host sliding events.
The original games plan called for rebuilding the century-old bobsled track in Cortina. But the IOC wants an existing track in Innsbruck, Austria, or St Moritz, Switzerland, to be used instead.
Therefore, if bobsled, luge and skeleton are to be held abroad, it might not make sense to build a planned Olympic Village in Cortina, which would be left with only women’s skiing and curling — as the men’s skiing is slated to take place in Bormio.
As a result, Paul Kristofic, coach of the US women’s ski team hasn’t yet pinned down where to house Shiffrin and the rest of his squad in 2026.
“We haven’t quite figured that out yet,” Kristofic said. “There’s still quite a few unknowns around it.”