Women’s Olympic downhill: Why Tofane, Cortina’s famed track, is ‘the most perfect’

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — There’s a certain look that downhill skiers get in their eyes when the track in Cortina, known as the Olympia delle Tofane, enters the conversation.

It’s the sort of course that a ski racer wouldn’t want to miss, even if she had recently ruptured the most important ligament in her knee. Lindsey Vonn did just that, and for several reasons, including the special place that Cortina has in the hearts of so many skiers, she has promised to do everything she possibly can to be in the starting gate Sunday for the Olympic downhill.

Even the newcomers only vaguely familiar with its features and intricacies have heard the stories and quickly grow to know the names of all those iconic chutes and jumps and curves. Every veteran remembers their first time coming down the starting hill at the top, trying not to take in the crazy view of the craggy peaks of the Dolomites, then flying through the pass that runs through those giant rocks, known as the Schuss. Within seconds, they are firing down a wall with a 65 percent gradient, which basically feels like a sheer drop.

From there, it’s on, for better or for worse.

“Cortina, it looks really pretty, but it will bite you in the ass,” said Breezy Johnson, the American downhiller who has her own special relationship with this course.

She has skied some of her fastest races and got her first top-10 finish here way back in 2017. It’s also the place where she wiped out and ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament in 2022, just weeks ahead of the Beijing Olympics, which she ended up missing.

“Some of my fastest skiing,” Johnson said, “but it’s also been one of the places that I have had some of the biggest mistakes.”

The Olympia delle Tofane is 1.6 miles and 2,500 feet of vertical drop, of giving and taking. Mikaela Shiffrin crashed here in the downhill in 2023, spraining two ligaments in her knee. The injuries sidelined her for six weeks and caused her to miss the next 11 races, wrecking any chance she had of repeating as the overall champion.

A year later, she posted a video of herself freeskiing down the Olympia delle Tofane with the Slovenian champion Tina Maze.

In a caption that went along with the video, Shiffrin wrote: “We live, we crash, we learn, we grow, and hopefully don’t allow fear to dictate how we experience the things we love to do. Let it be no more, and no less than what it really is — a part of the process.”

There’s just something about the Olympia delle Tofane — or maybe a lot of things about it — that evokes big thoughts and emotions. Between Vonn’s knee and the Olympic medals on the line, there is every reason to believe that will be the case again this year.

Vonn crashed last Friday in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in what ended up her final race before the Olympics. The 41-year-old champion came out of retirement in 2024 after successful partial right knee replacement surgery and has been the dominant downhill skier this season, which she says will be her last.

And now it’s her injured left knee against this epic downhill track, where she landed on a World Cup podium for the first time and has a record 12 wins. She has said she wouldn’t have come back if the Olympics were taking place anywhere else. So, of course, she’s going to wear a brace and see if she can overcome an injury that would send so many others into an operating room.

“I would love to have the normal Cortina, compact, amazing snow that is always here,” she said, of the surface skiers describe as dry and grippy, fast but not out-of-control slick. “They know how to prepare the course. And if it’s anything like it always is, I’ll be happy.”

She will have plenty of company. It’s rare for the Olympics to take place on a mountain that is a regular stop on the World Cup, which is why so many ski racers have such an emotional connection to it.

Barely anyone had ever raced on the mountain in Beijing four years ago. Pyeongchang, South Korea, was the furthest thing from a regular World Cup stop. Same goes for Sochi, Russia. While Whistler in 2010 may have felt familiar, since the World Cup races in the North American Rockies every December, it was still an unfamiliar place to race.

Tofane is the opposite of that. Ski racers can talk through its curves and undulations using the proper names or their own vernacular. After the Schuss, the “Duca d’Aosta” jump arrives, sending skiers nearly 50 meters in the air. From there it’s on to a blind turn known as the “Delta,” the “Gran Curvone” (translation: big bend), which is about what it sounds like, and the “Scarpadon,” with its fast curves and quick gradient changes.

All of this has convinced Bella Wright, another talented American, it is “the most perfect downhill track.”

“Amazing gliding, amazing technical turns, some fun jumps,” she said. “Overall, the beauty of this place is really what solidifies it for me. I was asked a couple years ago what I feel we would need for the Olympics, structurally, what they needed to do, construction-wise, whatever it was. And for me, I always said all I need is the Dolomites.”

Jackie Wiles, the leader of the American speed team, said the course is well-suited to U.S. skiers who often thrive on tracks with open, fast-flowing turns.

“I just really love the track,” Wiles said. “It’s a place that I feel really comfortable at, and the track, I feel like I can do in my head a million times in my sleep.”

So can just about everyone on the World Cup though, which Wiles thinks will make this one of the most competitive downhills in Olympic history. Everyone has their notes. Everyone knows what to do. Then it just becomes a matter of who can do it.

“Been coming here for 10 years now, so I think I’ve got about seven journal entries,” Wiles said. “That also means that everybody’s going to be bringing their A game, so you better bring yours.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Olympics, Global Sports, Women’s Olympics

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