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Bormio, a picturesque mountain town in northern Italy, is home to one of the most challenging ski racecourses in the world: the Stelvio. Known for its steep, bumpy, icy, dark, and fast terrain, the Stelvio punishes even the best skiers, often resulting in injuries. During training for the men’s downhill in late December this year, three athletes were seriously injured, including Cyprien Sarrazin, who triumphed on the sport’s three toughest courses last year: Bormio, Wengen, and Kitzbühel.
Next year at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, Bormio’s Stelvio course will host all the men’s alpine events, as well as ski mountaineering’s Olympic debut (women’s alpine events are slated for Cortina d’Ampezzo, five hours away by car).
Despite the Stelvio’s toughness—and because of it—it could be the best Olympic downhill in a half-century. The winner of the men’s downhill will be the best skier on the mountain.
“No one’s ever lucked out at Bormio,” says Doug Lewis, who won bronze in the 1985 world championship downhill on the Stelvio. Lewis is also a long-time TV analyst and live race announcer.
Here’s a look at what makes the Stelvio so challenging and why it could offer up the best men’s alpine Olympic competition in recent memory.
The Stelvio Has History
Unlike Olympic downhills over the past 50 years—almost all of which were held on courses made specifically for the Games and not used much before or after—Bormio is steeped in history.
Men first raced on the Stelvio at the 1985 world championships, with a 21-year-old Lewis winning bronze just 0.14 of a second behind Switzerland’s Pirmin Zurbriggen, who would go on to win Olympic gold in the 1988 men’s downhill.
The Swiss downhiller is just one of many legends who have won on the Stelvio. Herman Maier won three World Cup races in Bormio, and Olympic medalists Fritz Strobl, Lasse Kjus, Aksel Lund Svindal, and Michael Walchhofer have all won at least one World Cup there. Italy’s Dominik Paris has won seven times (six downhills and one super-G).
“[At the 2026 Olympics], you will have more comparison,” says Lewis. “It’s just fun to think back and see who’s going to stand up and enter the realm of champions that have been on this course.”
“Bormio is a classic downhill,” adds Ryan Cochran-Siegle, who won the 2022 super-G Olympic silver medal and has competed in 17 races on the Stelvio. “There’s a lot of technical aspects of it. It’s high speed. There are big jumps, so it brings a lot of really important and cool components to what makes a good downhill track.”
Americans Have Done Well in Bormio
Dating back to the Stelvio’s inaugural race in 1985, American speed skiers have done well in Bormio. Tommy Moe made the podium in the first Bormio World Cup in 1993 (third in downhill). Two years later, AJ Kitt finished second in a downhill.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, and Daron Rahlves and Bode Miller were regulars on the Bormio podium. Between them, they collected three wins. Then at the 2005 world championships, Miller and Rahlves went 1-2, respectively, in the downhill. It was just two days after Miller lost his ski near the top of the combined downhill and famously continued down the course one ski. Miller also won the super-G at the 2005 World Championships.
More recently, Cochran-Siegle won his first World Cup race on the Stelvio (a super-G in 2020). He was leading the downhill this year when he crashed right before the course’s most significant jump (he escaped unscathed).
“Whoever can embrace the mental challenge of survival and also generate power, find speed, and push themselves, you know, risk a lot,” he says, “those are the ones who will have the best time at the finish.”
Why Stelvio is so Tough
First, let’s look at the Stelvio’s pitch. From the start, the course drops at a 63º angle. (The steepest ski slope in the U.S. is 55º — Rambo in Crested Butte). At this angle, racers go from zero to 60 faster than a Formula 1 car. Then, at the San Pietro jump, the course drops away at 50º, like landing on a ski jump runout (a steepness flattened out on TV).
“People see us skiing, and they’re like, ‘I’m sure that’s like skiing I-89 at Cochran’s,’” jokes Cochran-Siegle, referring to the relatively flat race trail at his family’s ski area in Vermont.
From top to bottom, the Stelvio drops 3,356.3 vertical feet (1,023 meters) — over 500 feet more than the average Olympic men’s downhill in the last 50 years.
Then there’s the terrain. The course’s bumps and jumps have taken out some of the world’s best skiers, like Sarrazin this year and Marco Schwarz last year. And a tough traverse called the Carcentina leads into a turn that’s probably the most critical on the course. “You’ve got to carry speed out of that,” says Lewis.
This turn leads into the San Pietro jump, where racers dive “into empty space,” reads the course map. “Forty-plus meters is long time to drop out of the air at 80 miles an hour,” points out Lewis.
Then add the Stelvio’s length — 2.14 miles long, the second-longest classic downhill on the men’s World Cup tour — and the course is a beast.
It is even longer than other Olympic downhills. Over the past 50 years, men’s Olympic downhill courses have averaged 1.93 miles long. While an extra two-tenths of a mile might not seem long (about the length of an Olympic track), it’s an eternity for screaming legs. And lungs.
And unlike some other downhills, the Stelvio offers no place to rest. Even the Streif—home to Kitzbühel’s Hahnenkamm—has a flat-ish road where racers get about 20 seconds to regain their equilibrium.
“It’s kind of like a multiplier,” explains Lewis. “[The Stelvio] is rough, and it’s dark, but now you multiply it because you have nothing left in your body energy-wise.
“And you’re going 90 miles an hour.”
On the plus side, the 2026 Olympic downhill won’t be as dark as a typical Bormio World Cup, traditionally held in December, when the sun is low in the sky. The 2026 Olympic men’s downhill is scheduled for February 6, when the sun will be high enough to bathe more of the course in light.
Best Olympic Downhill?
Cochran-Siegle aims to compete in his third Olympic Games in Bormio. Since neither the downhill nor the freestyle in his previous two Olympics had sustained vertical, the margin for error was slim.
On the Stelvio, “the margin for error is a bit higher,” he says. And the winner will be the guy who respects the course while pushing to the limit.
“It’s probably going to be the best Olympic downhill that I’ve run.”
