American Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course in the course of the girls’s World Cup super-G ski race in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, in 2018.
Gabriele Facciotti/AP
disguise caption
toggle caption
Gabriele Facciotti/AP
In January, American athlete Jessie Diggins, the world’s top-ranked feminine cross-country skier, sprinted up a steep slope in Italy’s Val di Fiemme, poles pumping, for her third Tour de Ski victory.
Now, Diggins is again on the close by Tesero Cross-Nation Snowboarding Stadium in Val di Fiemme, a valley within the Italian Dolomites, for the Olympics — on a course the place she’s raced many instances.
Whereas the 2026 Winter Olympics happen hundreds of miles from the U.S., centered across the enterprise capital Milan and the ski resort city Cortina, the competitors websites in northern Italy are acquainted floor for a lot of on Group USA.
“Our athletes compete there typically. A lot of them prepare there,” says Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. “It is a spot the place we all know we will shine.”
To assist even the taking part in discipline, cross nation officers have reconfigured the course. “Most of it is not the identical; it is fairly actually working backwards for a part of it,” Diggins says. “You will have individuals like me who’ve been racing there for a really very long time, however on the identical time everybody’s type of relearning it yet again,” she says.
Jessie Diggins (proper) and teammate Kikkan Randall of the US pose with their gold medals after profitable the ladies’s 6 x 1.2 km Free Group Dash on the Nordic Ski World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy, in 2013. Val di Fiemme is the place cross-country races within the 2026 Olympics are being held.
Matthias Schrader/AP
disguise caption
toggle caption
Matthias Schrader/AP
At Val di Fiemme, athletes can even be ski leaping off steep, specialised ramps — and each cross-country snowboarding and ski leaping within the Nordic mixed.
Two hours to the north, driving over winding mountain roads, there’s the Antholz-Anterselva Biathlon Area. The valley is taken into account a “biathlon sanctuary,” in keeping with Biathlon World, the place high athletes have been snowboarding and taking pictures rifles for greater than 50 years.
U.S. biathletes have a specific benefit. “Our head coach for the final eight years is from the Antholz Valley, born and raised,” says Deedra Irwin, the highest U.S. feminine biathlete. “Most of our wax employees have been ski racing there since they have been youngsters.”
The U.S. has by no means medaled in biathlon. This might be their probability, Irwin says. “We type of are the locals,” she says. “We obtained all of the native intel, we obtained a pleasant setup in our home there.”
Some 40 miles to the south, the ski resort city Cortina d’Ampezzo will host curling and sliding sports activities like bobsled and skeleton. Girls’s Alpine skiers will compete on one of many world’s most iconic runs: the Olympia delle Tofane, which debuted on the 1956 Winter Video games.
It looms giant in Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn’s private historical past. “Each [skier] has their mountain the place they really feel most at house,” Vonn says. “For me, it is all the time been Cortina and Lake Louise. These are my two favourite spots.” Vonn has received many main milestone races in each Cortina and Lake Louise in Canada.
Vonn, who’s 41, is popping out of retirement for her fifth Olympic Video games. “I’ve a superb reference to the mountain. I do know what it wants. I do know what it takes to win there.”
A significant crash precipitated Vonn to rupture a knee ligament every week earlier than the beginning of the Video games, however she introduced this week she is going to nonetheless compete.
“I like the city; I like the ambiance. Everybody there has all the time welcomed me and handled me like a neighborhood,” Vonn says. A restaurant in Cortina named a margherita pizza after her.
These mountains lured her again for yet one more Olympic run. “It is such a lovely place. It is exhausting to not stand on high of that mountain and not likely notice why you’re keen on the game,” Vonn says. “I am excited to return there and see the dawn yet one more time.”
Vonn crashed badly at a World Cup race every week earlier than the beginning of the Olympics. She introduced that she is going to nonetheless compete within the Video games, snowboarding with a brace over the torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) on her left knee. “So long as there’s nonetheless an opportunity, I’ll attempt,” Vonn says.
The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off with the opening ceremony on Feb. 6 on the hundred-year-old San Siro Stadium in Milan and conclude Feb. 22 in Verona at one other historic venue: an outdated Roman amphitheater in-built A.D. 30 that gladiators as soon as fought in.
