By Julien Pretot
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 5 (Reuters) – While the fastest women in the world will soon charge down Cortina’s Olimpia delle Tofane piste at well over 100 km/h, the decisive race has been unfolding at sometimes barely 1 km/h.
Heavy, steady snowfall in recent days forced organisers to cancel Thursday’s opening women’s downhill training session, delaying the Alpine skiers’ first look at the Milano Cortina Olympic course.
In their place, hundreds of workers have taken over the mountain, inching methodically down the piste through the night to restore the dense, compact surface required for elite speed racing, according to FIS (International Ski Federation) speed-race director Alberto Senigagliesi.
“We started clearing the snow at 4 a.m., pushing everything off the piste,” Senigagliesi told Reuters, describing how more than 30 centimetres of fresh accumulation must be removed to reveal the solid base created a week earlier through water injection and two days of deep compaction.
“It takes 10 to 12 hours with nine machines. Each works a small sector and moves very slowly so as not to harm the base, pushing only small amounts of snow at a time,” he explained.
Around 250 people are involved across grooming crews, technical teams and safety-net installation, advancing metre by metre in a process governed by patience rather than speed — the opposite rhythm of the race the piste is being prepared to host.
“Today we scrape without letting the machines sink in, then mix the remaining snow with moist snow. The base is very compact but not icy,” Senigagliesi said.
Last week, water was spread at roughly 1 km/h across 200–300 metre sectors and left to settle for three to five hours before repeated full-width milling passes complete the finish.
“With cold temperatures and no new precipitation, surface moisture can refreeze and make the track fast, but the objective is consistency and durability rather than pure ice,” he added, underscoring the balance between speed, safety and fairness required before the first racer leaves the start gate.
Skiers, who are expected to reach 140 km/h on the Olimpia delle Tofane, have been praising the Cortina team’s ability to prepare a perfect track.
“I feel this is the most perfect downhill track, it has a bit of everything. There’s amazing gliding, amazing technical turns, some fun jumps,” American Isabella Wright said.
Two training runs are scheduled on Friday and Saturday, with the race on Sunday.
(Reporting by Julien Pretot, editing by Ed Osmond)
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