The Stelvio slope is famously one of the toughest on the World Cup skiing circuit. Nearly three and a half kilometres long, with a vertical drop of 1,023 metres and a maximum gradient of 63 per cent, it looms over the historic Alpine town of Bormio, its glimmering white contours visible in the narrow gaps between medieval buildings. This weekend, the imposing piste will host the men’s Alpine skiing downhill race: the blue riband event of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
The slope was literally buzzing in anticipation when I visited with two weeks to go. “One of our biggest investments has been this snow-making system, with new pipes and 67 new cannons,” Samanta Antonioli, the local councillor responsible for major events, told me, raising her voice to be heard over the hum. The finishing touches were being added to a new athletes’ lounge and a two-storey building for officials and timing equipment, but elsewhere Bormio has kept construction to a minimum in the interests of sustainability. “The athletes’ ‘village’ uses existing hotels,” Antonioli explained, and the massive, 5,000-seat grandstand overlooking the Stelvio is a temporary structure, to be dismantled when the five-ringed circus leaves town.
Perhaps the most groundbreaking building work of the games, however, was taking place to one side of the main Stelvio slope, where a squadron of snowcats was sculpting snow into a series of banked turns that would become the first ever Olympic ski mountaineering course.