The Alpine Ski World Championships in Cortina. The appointment is from 7 to 21 February with over six hundred athletes from seventy nations ready to win the thirteen world titles up for grabs. The sporting event will take place in compliance with safety regulations and without an audience but still requires participation, it is calculated, beyond 500 million people who will connect live on television from all over the world. More digital audiences through new media.

Alpine Ski World Championships in Cortina - Cortina by night

The operational machine is in full swing and, despite the absence of the public, Fondazione Cortina 2021 speaks of an event which, precisely for this reason, will be “Even more challenging, and no less spectacular. We are ready to let all the international public enjoy the great event, through digital innovations and a very high level TV production. We will bring the beauties of Cortina and the Dolomites to the international stage ".

Cortina's slopes are among the most technical and spectacular in the world

The beauties of Cortina and the Dolomites, in fact, which make up the Ampezzo valley one of the most famous mountain resorts in the world, the Pearl of the Dolomites. We can talk about its extraordinary mountains and the infinite, spectacular summer excursions that offer incomparable landscapes at every corner. Ski slopes, even those on which the athletes of the next world championships will compete. They are among the most technical and spectacular in the world, also with breathtaking views: Tofane, Lagazuoi, Cinque Torri, Cristallo, Faloria ...

Cortina Olympics

Not by chance, Cortina has already hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics and has been selected again, together with Milan, for the 2026th edition of the XNUMX Winter Olympic Games. A Lombard-Venetian Olympics that will also involve the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano. Cortina will host women's skiing on the Olympia delle Tofane slope, bobsleigh, luge and skeleton competitions on the Eugenio Monti slope and curling at the ice stadium. This Olympic spirit can be felt in the streets of Cortina right now, and the historic Hotel De La Poste has already Amico ready, the official cocktail of the next Olympics.

Hemingway and his special relationship with the Pearl of the Dolomites

Perhaps this cocktail would also have liked by Amelia Edwards, the great English writer and traveler who in 1872 wandered through the Ampezzo valleys, fascinated by the beauty of the Dolomites. To the Dolomites he dedicated Unclimbed peaks and unknown valleys, one of the first books that made the beauty of these mountains known to the world. Edwards, traveling with a friend, also stopped for a few days in Cortina, at the Aquila Nera hotel. It was called Schwarzer Adler because at that time the Cortinese territory was under Austrian rule, and it was the only one together with the Golden Star.

Alpine Ski World Championships in Cortina - mountains of Cortina

In those years Cortina was a small inhabited center: some houses, the church and little else around. The Friend cocktail would probably have liked it too Ernest Hemingway who had a very special relationship with Cortina. He frequented the Hotel De La Poste for four seasons and the room where he slept and where his typewriter is still kept was dedicated to him. The King Albert of Belgium, father of the last queen of Italy Maria José, was a great lover of mountaineering and climbed the Ampezzo Dolomites accompanied by the Alpine Guides of Cortina.

The great history was also made in the Ampezzo Dolomites

Cortina is also history, not only of winter sports but also of Italy. On these mountains, which still bear many testimonies, an important chapter of the First World War was written. Cortina is a lot of glamor and a lot of worldliness. Cortina is cinema, to the point that cinema has become the subject of a series of itineraries dedicated to film tourism in the shadow of the Dolomites. Between stars and cinema stories, one cannot but remember that in 1956 Sofia Loren she was the godmother of the Olympic Games in Cortina, and who sat at the tables of the Cortina cafes Brigitte Bardot, Ingrid Bergman, Clarke Gable...

Alpine Ski World Championships in Cortina - summit of Cortina d'Ampezzo

Cortina in winter provided the setting for the film by Carlo Vanzina Christmas holidays (1983) but also, taking a step back over twenty years, a Winter holidays (1959) by Camillo Mastrocinque with Alberto Sordi and Vittorio De Sica. Many Italian and international film productions shot in Cortina and dedicated to adventure films have given us a pinch of adrenaline. In the famous film Cliffhanger (1993) Sylvester Stallone is the protagonist of a chase on the suspension bridge along the via ferrata Ivano Dibona, in the Cristallo group.

Cortina and its mountains ideal set for cinema

In these enchanting landscapes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer they chose the suggestive beauty of Passo Giau for some scenes of the romantic film Lady hawke (1985). And if we still want to talk about the Olympics and winter sports, Cortina leads us in the footsteps of James Bond.

Vittorio Gassman Cortina

In fact, it was shot in the Ampezzo basin For your eyes only (1981), the twelfth chapter of this famous film series. Ice stadium, Olympic springboard, Eugenio Monti bob track, Olympia della Tofana track. These are the stages of a very special journey into the great sport of Cortina. Between past, present and future.

(Credit ph Cortina Marketing Archive, Zardini Photo Archive, Roman Tyulyakov ProAlps, Giulia Bevilacqua)

Alpine Ski World Championships in Cortina last edit: 2021-01-23T09:00:00+01:00 da Cristina Campolonghi

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