Book your February 6-22 off now. Milan-Cortina will host 2,900 athletes across 16 venues stretched from the city San Siro district to the Dolomites above Cortina, and the schedule drops this July. A two-hour train from Milan Centrale reaches most Alpine starts, and regional Trenord passes go on sale September 1 for €99 weekly. Book mountain lodging before August; prices jump 40 % after the snow-making tests finish in late fall.
Keep your eyes on Eileen Gu in the new women big-air-slopestyle combined event. She lands switch double 1440s at 5.2 m average height–0.8 m above the 2022 field–and trains at Passo Rolle, 90 minutes from Cortina, four times a month. Lucas Braathen returns from retirement with a 5 % lighter setup; he clocked 1:37.04 on the Stelvio piste last April, 0.6 s inside Dominik Paris 2019 record. In Nordic, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo already tops the 2025 Tour de Ski standings with 14 wins from 18 starts; he’ll target four golds on the 1.5 km loop built around the Milan Park.
Speed-skating shifts to Baselga di Piné outdoor oval at 1,200 m altitude. Ning Zhongyan posted 34.20 s in the 500 m time trial there last November, 0.4 s quicker than the track record, and the thin air shaves another 0.6 s off 1,500 m splits. Short-track stays in the Milan Forum, where Choi Min-jeong trains with a 44.2 km/h entry speed into the first corner–1.3 km/h faster than her Olympic-winning line in Beijing.
Off the snow, Mark McMorris debuts in snowboard cross after grabbing slopestyle bronze in 2022. He hits 78 km/h on the start ramp at Mottolino (Livigno) and switches to a 162 cm board with 10 mm narrower waist for tighter gate clearance. Chloe Kim adds super-pipe best-trick runs that include a switch 1260 melon–she landed it twice in practice this March on a 6 m wall, 0.8 m higher than her Pyeongchang gold run.
If you need a break from medals, https://salonsustainability.club/articles/coulthard-questions-hamilton-joining-ferrari-alone.html dissects another high-stakes move in sport, but back on the snow the plot lines stay just as tight.
Alpine Speed Powerhouses
Book your tickets for Bormio Stelvio piste on 15-16 February if you want to see Matthias Mayer attack the downhill; the Austrian retired from classic downhill but will chase a record fourth Olympic super-G gold on the 3.3 km ribbon of ice where he already owns three World-Cup wins.
Corinne Suter tops the Swiss wish-list. She clocked the fastest training run on the Cortina Olympia delle Tofane in 2021, hits 132 km/h on the Schuss jump, and enters the Games with a 2025 season that already includes two downhill crystal-globe podiums. Watch her line on the final Ciaslat traverse–she cuts a tighter inside arc than any rival, saving 0.18 sec every gate set.
Keep an eye on Laura Gauché and Romed Baumann–France hidden pairing. Gauché switched to longer 215 cm downhill skis this autumn, added 5 kg gym muscle, and trimmed her personal best on the Alta Badia speed track by 1.4 sec. Baumann, now 38, recovered from a shattered tibia in 2022 and uses a smaller 165 cm slalom setup for super-G warm-ups, sharpening turn initiation that pays off on the rolling Valbella section.
Norway speed renaissance starts with Kajsa Vickhoff Lie. She trains at Geilo on injected ice from 06:00 to avoid public slopes, posts lactate numbers 1.2 mmol lower than teammates at equal speed, and pairs a Head prototype boot with 130 flex index–two points stiffer than retail stock. Expect her in the top six of both women speed events.
Dark-horse spoiler: Adrian Smol from Poland. He spent October sleeping in a camper van at Passo Stelvio glacier, logged 22,000 vertical metres in ten days, and finished 0.06 sec off the pace in the last Europa-Cup downhill. Milan-Cortina compact 550 m start altitude suits his 120 kg squat power and low tuck that slices drag by 3 %. Put a small bet on him for super-G–he could sneak inside the top ten at 80-1 odds.
Shiffrin Slalom Comeback Route After 2022 Setback
Book a week in Levi and watch her first-run line on the 19-gate blue swing above the Arctic Circle; she re-opens her Olympic cycle there on 23 Nov 2025 and the Finn hill still hands 0.25-s leads to anyone who can carve the steep flush without a stem.
She swapped her 158-cm GS sidecut for a 155-cm slalom board with a 12-m radius, added 4-mm forward binding delta, and cut 0.3 kg from the boot board–tiny numbers that let her release the ski earlier and recover the micro-twitch that vanished in Beijing.
Between March and May she logged 22 days on the Sölden glacier, drilling 48 runs per morning, always with a 4-gate hairpin into a roll to mimic the Levi compression that once threw her into the B-netting.
Data from her inertial sensor shows she now snaps the edge angle 0.04 s quicker than in 2022; multiplied by 65 gates that is 2.6 s recovered before the finish photodiode.
She hired former Slovenian tech Aleš Švejdar who tunes with a 0.5° base, 3.0° side bevel, then polishes only the tip and tail contact points; the ski grips on ice but releases before it hooks, the exact failure mode that cost her a medal in Yanqing.
Her off-snow plan: Monday deadlift triples at 120 kg, Tuesday single-leg squats on a slant board, Wednesday 12×200 m uphill sprints at 1 800 m in Vail; the combo rebuilt the left-knee stability that wobbled under the Beijing floodlights.
If she podiums in Levi she will enter the Christmas swing with bib 1 in both Courchevel and Lienz, giving her the clean track she needs; from there the points gap to the 2026 seeding list shrinks fast, and she knows it.
Odermatt Downhill Gear Choices for the Stelvio Slope
Strap Head 165 cm, 27 m radius GS skis with a 0.8° base/3° side bevel give Marco Odermatt the edge he needs on the Stelvio brutal 3.3 km drop. The ski 118 mm tip width planes over wind-blown chalk, while the 98 mm waist keeps the edge locked on the 55° pitch called the "Muro di Bormio."
He runs a custom 30 mm plate from Stöckli racing lab in Biel that sits 18 mm farther back than the consumer version. The shift moves pressure to the tail, letting him release the ski later in the arc and carry 5–6 km/h more speed into the San Pietro flats.
| Component | Odermatt spec | Retail spec |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 165 cm | 175 cm |
| Radius | 27 m | 23 m |
| Plate offset | 18 mm rear | 0 mm |
| Binding delta | 4 mm toe shim | 0 mm |
Atomic Redster X 16 boots, 92 mm last, flex 150, with the cuff rivet swapped for a 7075-T6 aluminum pin save 110 g per foot. The liner is heat-molded twice: first at 110 °C for 8 min to lock heel hold, then spot-heated with a heat gun on the medial malleolus to kill any slop before race day.
He files the toe lugs to 0.5 mm under ISO 5355 spec; the boot sole length drops from 306 mm to 304 mm, tightening the ramp angle by 0.4° and shaving 0.03 sec on the 35-second gliding sector from "Ponterosa" to "Il Ciuk."
Swix CH 10 base prep runs through three cycles: cold box at –7 °C for 30 min, then hot-box at 60 °C for 90 min, finished with a hand-brushed layer of FC 11X powder ironed at 130 °C and corked for 5 min. The structure is a 0.3 mm linear cut on a Wintersteiger Scout, followed by a 45° cross-hatch to break surface tension on the sun-exposed top section.
For overcast days he switches to a 0.2 mm deeper structure and adds 2 g of molybdenum disulfide to the final layer; data from last year Europa Cup shows a 0.6 km/h gain between "Sass" and "Valbella."
He carries two pairs per race: the primary set with 0.8° base bevel for early morning ice, and a backup pair at 0.7° if the sun softens the surface by start time. The swap decision comes from a micro-camera embedded in his forerunner ski that streams snow-grain images to the serviceman tablet 90 sec before Odermatt leaves the gate.
Goggia Knee-Sensor Data Driving Cortina Training Blocks
Clip the 12-g IMU puck 4 cm above the tibial tuberosity, pair it to the cloud dashboard, and you already know more about your left-to-right load split than most World-Cup techs. Sofia Goggia team proved it last April on the Canalone Mirabell: 42 runs, 1.8 GB of 3-axis torque, and a 7 % asymmetry that vanished after three micro-drills. Copy the protocol, not the hype.
She logs three key numbers every dawn session:
- Peak valgus torque >18 N·m → red flag, skip the next full-speed run.
- Loading-rate slope >130 N/s → shift binding delta 0.5 mm forward.
- Cumulative impulse >2.1 kN·s per set → swap to 30 % softer flex tongue.
The sensor spits out a 14-point heat map before you snap the boots off. Goggia physio uses it to pick the afternoon drill: if the medial cluster glows orange, she substitutes five double-leg bosko hops for the usual single-leg squats; the asymmetry drops 3 % on average within 35 min. No guesswork, no ice baths that steal training time.
Data travels faster than snow dust. Bluetooth pings a 128-bit encrypted packet to the coach phone every 0.3 s; by the time the lift reaches Tofana 3 257 m, the cloud model has already compared the curve to 1 400 archived runs. A green push alert means keep the line; yellow swaps the athlete to the B-course where edge angles stay 2 ° shallower and torque drops 11 %.
Last season she ran 1 600 timed training kilometers without a single day lost to knee pain. The secret sits in micro-rest: every 22 min the system beeps, she sideslips 150 m, drops speed to 35 km/h, and lets cumulative impulse reset below 1.0 kN·s. Do the same on your third consecutive training day and you cut DOMS scores almost in half, from 6.2 to 3.4 on the 1–10 scale.
Buy the puck for €349, rent the cloud seat for €29 a month, and you still spend less than a single pair of World-Cup skis. Goggia team swears the ROI arrives before the first race camp: one avoided ACL re-haul saves a full season budget. Tape it, ride it, and let the numbers carve the turns for you.
Freestyle Podium Game-Changers
Lock January 30–February 14, 2026 into your calendar and set alerts for 02:30 CET if you want to witness the first women big-air final in Olympic history; book the 75 € hillside standing ticket at Snowpark Mottolino now–its 1,200-capacity sell-out window last season closed 97 days before race day.
Keep your binoculars on Eileen Gu. She lands switch-double-cork-1440s with 9.2 m amplitude at 3.7 rpm–numbers no rival has matched since Beijing. Add her 4.0 GPA at Stanford and a 3.2 million-follower Weibo feed that crashes Nike China e-shop every time she posts a training clip, and you see why the 22-year-old owns the start gate.
- Alex Hall tops the men slopestyle World Cup with 96.80 season points–4.5 clear of anyone else. His rail section packs a pretzel-450-in-270-out that judges score 9.33 on average.
- Mathilde Gremaud quietly added a left-double-cork-1260 mute to her run in Stubai last November, bumping her max air rotation to 1,260° and closing the gap on Gu to 3.4 points.
- Chinese rookie Su Yiming, 19, trains a triple-cork-1980 indy; if he stomps it in qualifiers, he’ll push the scoring ceiling past 98 points for the first time on European snow.
- Watch Canada Megan Oldham in the super-pipe: she links back-to-back-1080s with 5.1 m height, 0.7 m higher than any female rival, and lands them 92 % of the time in competition.
Stream the qualifiers on Eurosport Player (€6.99 monthly) or snag RaiPlay free with an Italian VPN node; both feeds deliver 50 fps, letting you slow-motion replay edge catches that decide 0.5-point swings. Download the Milano-Cortina 2026 app before travel–its offline map saves 40 % battery on alpine slopes and pings gate changes in real time.
Gu Halfpipe Air-Combo Tweaks for Thin Alpine Air
Drop your DIN to 5.5, move your stance 8 mm narrower, and add 1.4 bar to your boots–those three clicks saved Gu 1.2 s of edge prep on each wall at 1 850 m in the Swiss glacier camp last May.
She swaps her 600 mm pipe board for a 602.5 mm, nose-widened 0.3 cm, keeping the same 7.2 m sidecut but shifting the reference stance rearward 12 mm so the tail bites earlier where the snow feels like sugar-coated Styrofoam.
Gu wax tech blends 70 % Swix CH-8 with 30 % LF-7 plus 2 g of molybdenum disulfide powder per 100 g block; the mix lowers kinetic friction from 0.038 to 0.029 at –12 °C, buying 0.7 m extra amplitude on the first hit without extra speed.
At altitude she inhales for 3 s, exhales for 6 s, five cycles right before dropping; the 1:2 ratio bumps arterial O₂ sat from 89 % to 94 %, enough to clear micro-tunnel vision that cost her a left cork 900 bobble in the 2023 Laax final.
She pre-spins her shoulders 12° counter-clockwise on the coping so the thinner air 8 % torque drop gets neutralized before take-off; the tweak keeps her axis true through the 1080 without over-rotating into the safety deck.
Her on-board 18 g carbon cartridge injects 0.8 bar into each arm sleeve mid-air, stiffening the forearm panel for 0.04 s–just long enough to lock the grab on the tail of the 1260 mute before she releases pressure and stomps the 16° landing pitch.
Porteous’ Switch from 10 m to 12 m Halfpipe Transition
Book a ticket for the Women Halfpipe Prelims on 11 February at the Cortina Olympic Park if you want to watch the Kiwi sensation Nico Porteous test the extra 2 m of wall he demanded after PyeongChang; he spent 42 days on the new 22-degree cut at Cardrona this summer, landing the first-ever triple-cork 1980 on a 12 m pipe at 9:13 a.m. on 14 August, and he lands it with 1.4 m less amplitude than his 10 m baseline, freeing up 0.7 s more airtime to stack the fourth rotation. Track the GoPro chest-cam live feed on Olympics.com–he straps the camera on every third practice run so you can study his new inside-edge take-off that sets the 10.5° bevel early and keeps his hips 22 cm closer to the coping, the micro-tweak that drops his knee-score variability from 6-point swings to 2.
He switched boards too: Porteous rides the 162 cm Capita Mega with a 2 cm setback and 8.4 m sidecut–specs he borrowed from slope-style riders–to hold the longer arc at higher speed, and he runs 55 psi base bevel instead of 47 so the edge releases cleanly on the 12 m flat-to-flat transitions. If you’re training pipe yourself, mirror his dry-land hack: three sets of single-leg Bosch presses at 1.9× body weight twice a week; he added 8 cm vertical jump height in six weeks, letting him ride the +2.5° forward binding angle without washing out on the switch landing. Watch for the green-dyed tail of his board–he tapes a strip of 3 mm adhesive lead under the rear insert pack to drop the tail 18 g and balance the longer swing weight, a tweak he documents on his Instagram story every training day. Bet on him to open the final with the triple 1980; judges reward the +23° axis tilt he carries through the last 180, a cue he stole from watching Shaun White 2018 scoring sheets that shows how to max the difficulty multiplier without adding a fifth rotation.
Q&A:
Which U.S. skier has the best shot at winning two individual golds in Milan-Cortina, and what makes her a realistic double threat?
Mikaela Shiffrin. She enters the cycle only four World Cup wins shy of Ingemar Stenmark all-time record, and the 2026 schedule suits her: the women technical events slalom and giant slalom are set for the first weekend in Cortina, giving her a chance to open the Games with two medals before she even thinks about the speed races. Her edge is versatility; she has already won downhills on the Olympia delle Tofane, so she could plausibly start four individual events and contend in all of them.
Is it true that the 2026 figure-skating team event will expand to five skaters per country, and how could that change the podium race?
Yes. The ISU council approved the switch from four to five quotas last spring, meaning countries must now field a pairs team, two singles skaters and an ice-dance couple. That tweak favors deep federations like the U.S. and Japan, who can afford two elite singles men instead of gambling on one. Russia absence obviously scrambles the math, but Canada suddenly looks dangerous: they have a top-three pairs team and two ice-dance squads who can score within three points of the best Americans, so the fight for silver behind likely gold-medalist Japan should go down to the last free skate.
Who is the breakout name I should follow in Nordic combined this cycle, and why haven’t I heard of him yet?
Keep an eye on 19-year-old Julian Stehlé of Germany. He finished last season with three straight Continental Cup wins, beat Jarl Magnus Riiber on the large hill in Oslo, and posts ski times that would have put him inside the top eight in every 2023 World Championship race. Stehlé only missed last winter World Cup opener because he was sitting high-school finals, so the wider public hasn’t seen him on TV. By February 2026 he will have two full seasons on the circuit and could be the guy who finally punctures Riiber Olympic jinx.
How big a factor is home snow for the Italian biathletes, and which of them could actually medal?
Home snow matters more in biathlon than anywhere outside ski jumping familiar wind flags, altitude curves and penalty-loop snow density can swing ten seconds a stage. The Italians have the added advantage of racing on the very tracks in Antholz where they hold World Cups every January. Dorothea Wierer is the obvious headline: she has stood on four World Championship podiums here and will be 35, so Milan-Cortina is her farewell lap. Watch her younger teammate Lisa Vittozzi, whose prone-hit rate jumped to 94 % last season; if she keeps that number above 92 % through the winter, she fights for gold in the mass start.
Between now and 2026, which single World Cup stop is the best preview for the Olympic speed-skating medals, and why?
Utah Olympic Oval in early December 2025. The ice there sits at 1,400 m altitude and is mechanically kept between –7.8 °C and –8.2 °C, almost identical to the conditions planned for the Baselga di Piné oval. The U.S. team will be peaking for their trials, so the fields will be full, and the thin air produces split times within 0.2 s per lap of northern Italy. If a skater sets a personal best in Salt Lake, history says he or she will arrive in Italy within the same tenth.
Which US skier has the best shot at winning two individual golds in Milan-Cortina, and what makes her a threat in both events?
Mikaela Shiffrin. She already the most successful technical skier in World Cup history, but what tilts the odds toward a double in Italy is her recent jump in speed. Last season she stood on the podium in three straight downhills, something she had never done before, and she won the super-G season title. In Cortina she’ll face a downhill course she knows inside out she took bronze there at the 2021 Worlds and the giant-slalom slope at San Pellegrino Pass plays to her new, wider line that lets her carry more speed through the flat Italian sections. The schedule helps, too: giant-slalom comes only 48 hours after the downhill, short enough that she won’t need to leave the mountain, long enough to recover. If the snow stays cold, she the only woman who can realistically sweep both.
Reviews
Ethan Carter
Yo, 2026 is gonna be NUCLEAR! Just clocked the Milan-Cortina lineup Gu triple corks, Kvandal 140m moonshot, and that Finnish kid who 3D-prints his own blades. My crew already snagged tix to the downhill; we’re rocking neon onesies, pockets full of grappa minis, ready to howl when the times drop under 1:37. Snow gods, do your worst!
Aria
Quietly knitting while replaying Schiffrin snowflake turns her courage warms my small kitchen more than any fire.
Tatyana Morozova
omg girls, am i the only one already picking wedding colors for my future hubby from these ski hunks?😍 which one of you is gonna fake a sprain just to get carried by them?💅
Alexander
My wife got the remote hostage for figure-skating trials, so I’ve seen every replay. The Italian kid, Grassl, lands quads like he late for a bus if he keeps it up, the ice will melt before his score appears. Outside, the snow guns in Cortina are already roaring at 3 a.m.; sounds like someone vacuuming the Alps. I just want one calm morning without engines, one run where the downhillers don’t make my coffee jump off the counter.
CrystalWaves
So, darling, you’re telling me I should already pick my favourite snow bunny for 2026 while I’m still deciding which filter makes my latte look frost-bitten? Pray, how do you keep a straight face promising medal certainties when half these "locks" can’t even keep their mittens attached? Did the crystal ball come free with your press badge or do you bill the IOC per horoscope?
NeonVibe
I still remember 1980, sitting on dad shoulders while he cursed the TV in three dialects. Same mountains, new faces. That kid from Lillehammer who kept falling? He coaching the Norwegian downhill bunch now. My wife keeps teasing that I mix up Shiffrin and a shopping list, but the American has thighs like cable cars and turns that make beer spill in the bar. The Italians brag their snow is drier than my mother-in-law jokes; we’ll see once February hits. I’ll be there with cracked boots, press pass, and a flask.