Men’s Olympic downhill: the pitfalls of the Stelvio

UThose were unusually gentle pictures on Thursday on the Stelvio. The Swiss Franjo von Allmen, for example, could be seen leaning forward during the finish jump and touching the tips of his skis with his hands. Or Dominik Paris, who turned his hips to the side in the middle of a jump and put his skis sideways. Some of the alpine skiers jumped around like the freestyle athletes who compete in their competitions on the other side of the Passo di Foscagno in Livigno. Was it really the sun alone that was responsible for all the merriment?

After all, that’s what you hear most often from ski racers about the Stelvio, the Olympic downhill slope in Bormio, where the first ski competition of the Games takes place on Saturday (11.30 a.m.): The shadow, some say with a slight exaggeration, usually falls over the steep slope at the beginning of winter and only disappears again with the first flowers of spring. When the downhill skiers arrive here for the World Cup race, every year at the end of December, no one expects the sun.

But now, at the beginning of February, a different picture. Wild jumps in the blazing sunlight, as if a youth ski course were passing through. And the question: Is this really the infamous, dangerous, invincible Stelvio that everyone warned about? Or a mild Olympic version of it?

A clue to an answer lies above. The sun was also shining in one of the right-hand bends after the start on Thursday, but the Austrian Daniel Hemetsberger still lost his grip, then his balance and, shortly before he crashed into the fence, his helmet. A short time later, with his face covered in blood, he got up again; the fall was minor, partly because the airbag that the racing drivers wear under their suit had opened. Hemetsberger can take a lot; he has been riding without cruciate ligaments in his knee for many years. At the finish he is only more annoyed about the botched training: “The slope would have been cool, I would have been really happy to ski down there.”

Cyprien Sarrazin fell so badly during training in Bormio two years ago that doctors had to fight for his life

Maybe this is a good starting point for a better understanding of what’s going on here: A normal person would have thanked heaven that they were still alive after Hemetsberger’s fall and then probably would never have skied again. A normal person would also consider a dislocated shoulder as a reason for refusing a descent, but Norwegian Fredrik Moeller – who fell in the first training session on Wednesday – wants to try it anyway. Downhill skiers are not normal people, they are “critters”, as they say in Austrian. Vincent Kriechmayr called Hemetsberger a “bull” on Thursday. And yet even they always reach their limits in Bormio.

The list of serious falls that have happened on the Stelvio in recent years is shockingly long. A selection: The American Marco Sullivan was hospitalized with a serious head injury in 2010, the Slovenian Klemen Kosi suffered serious facial fractures in 2018, the Austrian Marco Schwarz fell in 2023 and needed almost two years to return to the world’s best. And then the year 2024, the plague year of the Stelvio, still hovers over everything.

Josua Mettler and Gino Caviezel from Switzerland as well as Pietro Zazzi from Italy had to be transported away by helicopter. But what was most remembered was the fall of the Frenchman Cyprien Sarrazin, who jammed in the middle before a jump, took off and landed on his back. He “almost died” that day in December, Sarrazin said afterwards. For five days, doctors fought for his life and to ensure that he did not suffer any permanent damage. He succeeded, he doesn’t want to give up, Sarrazin continues to work on his comeback today, even if the Olympic Games were out of the question. But his crash was a reminder of how dangerous the track is. And the trigger for sharp criticism.

“They don’t know how to prepare a track,” said Sarrazin’s teammate Nils Allegre at the time: “They’ve been preparing tracks for 40 years, but they know nothing – except how to make them dangerous.” At the time, the Frenchman even denied the organizers that he was suitable for the Olympics; it took a word of power from the Fis manager, Markus Waldner, to contain the debate.

But the fundamental problem with the Stelvio remains the same, regardless of whether it is December 2024 or February 2026: the steep terrain in Bormio, the large difference in altitude of almost 1000 meters, all of this has its pitfalls when it comes to preparation. Getting the same quality snow at the top, middle and bottom is extremely difficult due to the sunlight and the associated temperature differences. This can result in icy conditions at the top and grippy conditions further down, but the athletes have strapped on a pair of skis that are only suitable for one of the two conditions. “In Bormio you always know what you are getting: a dangerous mix that you cannot adapt to,” says someone who has traveled here for years but would rather not be in the newspaper with this assessment. Marco Odermatt called a trip here a few years ago “a fight for survival”.

On the other hand, that’s exactly what the drivers are asking for. The Olympic downhill runs of past Games were perceived by most as pretentiousness; both in Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022, for example, there were artificially created routes without the flair of the European classics. From the famous quartet with the Streif (Kitzbühel), the Saslong (Gröden) and the Lauberhorn route (Wengen), the Stelvio is the first downhill run that has the great honor of being skied at the Olympic Games. It’s a bit like the Summer Games in London in 2012, when the tennis competitions took place in Wimbledon: the sport is returning to one of its most famous places. But in this case it comes with a certain risk.

However, no one among the drivers wants to admit this these days. In the interviews you hear good and bad things about the route, more sunshine and better light are definitely not harmful when driving. “The slope has developed well in the last few days,” said Germany’s starter Simon Jocher. However, the training rides before an Olympic ride are used even more tactically than usual, with many braking at appropriate points so as not to give the competition any indication of the ideal line. The tactics also include the maneuvers with the acrobatic jumps at the target jump, as a show for the cameras. The serious test is yet to come on the Stelvio.