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Writer's pictureRaúl Revuelta

Val di Fassa Preview



Next weekend the Women's Alpine Skiing World Cup goes to Val di Fassa, to the Ski Area San Pellegrino.

On Friday, February 26th, the slope La VolatA in the ski area San Pellegrino will host the first of three women speed events, entrusted by FIS to the Ski Team Fassa. Three races will be preceded by two days of training. The program will start with the Downhill that should have taken place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, followed by a second Downhill on Saturday 27th and by a Super-G on Sunday 28th, both scheduled in Yanqing.


Val di Fassa is ready to enter the world of top-class skiing: an opportunity to show its connection with the alpine skiing, first as a resort that is part of the biggest ski domain in Europe, the Dolomiti Superski, and then also as a destination whose sports story starts back in 1988, when the champion Alberto Tomba began to train here with his coach Flavio Roda (now FISI president). A story that was reinforced in 2001 with the first of 28 European Cup races and then in 2006 with the beginning of the Piste Azzurre project, which entitled the valley as the training center of the Italian National team, passing through the extraordinary experience of the 2019 World Junior Alpine Skiing Championships, whose closing ceremony also took place on February 27th. More than 80 international FIS races have been hosted here till nowadays.


The new racecourse called pista La VolatA is a steep, fast run, featuring a continuous series of spine-tingling walls with gradients of up to 50%, for a total length of 2400 m and 630 m of altitude drop. This slope hosted the Downhill and Giant Slalom races in the FIS Val di Fassa 2019 Junior Alpine Skiing World Championships.



Corinne Suter won the women's downhill world title in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Suter won the opening Downhill race of this season, in Val d'Isère on 18 December. She also finished second on the second race day in Val d'Isère. She has claimed eight World Cup podiums in the Downhill, all in her last 15 appearances in this discipline.

In Cortina, Lara Gut-Behrami won the world titles in the Super-G and Giant Slalom and collected the bronze medal in the Downhill.

Gut-Behrami with 9 victories has won the most Downhill races in the World Cup among active female skiers.

Kira Weidle finished on the podium twice in World Cup Downhill events, including a third place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2019. She also claimed the silver medal in Downhill at the world championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Breezy Johnson finished fifth in the most recent downhill in the World Cup, after claiming a third place in each of the first four downhill events this season.


Lara Gut-Behrami could win the Super-G crystal globe for a third time, after 2013-2014 and 2015-2016. Gut-Behrami will claim this season's Super-G crystal globe if she finishes in the top-26 or if Corinne Suter fails to win this race. Suter is Gut-Behrami's only remaining competitor for the globe but is trailing by 195 points.

She has won each of the last four women's Super-G events in the World Cup. The Swiss also won the Super-G at the world championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Corinne Suter won silver in the Women's Super-G in Cortina 2021 but failed to reach the podium in the last three Super-G races held in the World Cup, directly following a run of four podiums. Suter's only World Cup win in the super-G came in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 9 February 2020.

Tamara Tippler finished on the podium in a World Cup Super-G race on seven occasions.

Kajsa Vickhoff Lie claimed her first career World Cup Super-G podium this season when she finished second in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 30 January.

Petra Vlhová finished second in the World Cup Super-G in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 1 February. It was her 41st World Cup podium, and her first one in the Super-G.

In Cortina, Mikaela Shiffrin raced Super-G for the first time in more than a year and won the bronze medal but she is going to skip Val di Fassa to return to the competition in Jasna and Are weekends of tech (a GS and one slalom in Slovakia, and two slaloms in Sweden) and Lenzerheide.

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