Val Di Sole, 20 Years Of Black Snake: The Most Feared And Loved Downhill Track Awaits The Champions Of The 2018 UCI World Championship

Black Snake: Just saying this name gives every rider a shiver of admiration and fear. Celebrating its twentieth yearis the legendary Val di Sole track - the most difficult and technical in the world - on which Downhill champions dream of triumphing at least once in their life, a crowning achievement in their professional career.

There are less than two months to go to the great event at Daolasa di Commezzadura, when, from 6 to 8 July, the Val di Sole will again host the Italian stage of the Downhill and Cross Country UCI World Cup, in addition to the Four-Cross World Championship. Once again the Black Snake will be under the spotlight, ready to make a generation of thrill-seeking bikers dream again.

Twenty years of challenges, head-to-heads, leaps, excitement that have brought to the heart of the Val di Sole the world's leading Downhill protagonists. It was designed by no other than one of the great Italian pioneers of Downhill, Freeride and Enduro, Pier Paolo “Pippo” Marani, aka “Il Randagio”, as he is known in the field, with the support of Cristian Vender, the trail builder of the Bike Parks at Passo del Tonale and Commezzadura.

Only the best have won the Black Snake challenge: in particular America's Aaron Gwin; in 2017 he came in ahead of Amaury Pierron and Loïc Bruni, stopping the chronometer at 3:32.905. On 7 July the eyes of tens of thousands of spectatorswill be glued on the riders as they wait to see who will be triumphant at the Mercedes Benz 2018 UCI MTB World Cup in the Downhill.

A track with an Old School flavour for Downhill purists, who demand an imaginative interpretation of the land. Two-thousand-two-hundred metres long, climbs of 519 metres, starting from the intermediate station at the Daolasa-Val Mastellina cable car (1,350 metres), a flight of about 4 minutes that feel like an instant and an eternity when the adrenalin is at its peak.

The Black Snake is so famous all over the world that some stretches have been renamed and now come up in anecdotes and stories: Stoned Stones, Teo’s Dog Stones, The Hell passage – nomen omen –, Red Bull Section and Val di Sole Jump.

Every summer the track attracts thousands of bikers who want to test themselves and emulate the great champions.

The Black Snake is part of the Bike Park Val di Sole at Daolasa di Commezzadura. It has 3 trails with different levels of difficulty and they can be reached in the 8-seat Daolasa-Val Mastellina cable car. In addition to the ultra-famous World Cup route, where every year the best bikers in the world challenge each other, enthusiasts of the "ruote grasse” can also have fun on their bikes on north-shore, jumps, doubles, bends and rock-gardens.