Positive Summer For Inspection For Val Di Fassa
Val di Fassa will be one of the hosts of the women's calendar of the next World Cup season. The return of the women's World Cup has been made official during the spring meetings with two super-G races scheduled on Saturday, 24 and Sunday, 25 February 2024. The 'Piste Azzurre' of the Trentino valley will also host four European Cup events. In addition to the traditional men's slalom at the Ski Stadium Aloch in San Giovanni di Fassa, set for 17 December 2023, the "La Volata" slope of the San Pellegrino Ski Area will have the honour of hosting two women's downhill races on 20 and 21 December and a super-G, on Friday 22 December, a real "test event" given the appointment of the World Cup.
Once the dates have been set, the organisational machine has started to move the first gears, beginning with the Fis technical inspection, which took place by the Chief Race Director World Cup Women Peter Gerdol, together with the race director Alberto Senigagliesi, the coordinator of the Women's European Cup Jordi Pujol and the race operations director Andreas Krönner.
The president of the newly-born Val di Fassa Grandi Eventi company Andrea Weiss, together with the technical director of the Organising Committee Davide Moser, the director of the Apt Val di Fassa Paolo Grigolli, the president of the Ski Area San Pellegrino-Dolomiti Mauro Vendruscolo were enthusiastic to be able to start a new organisational adventure officially included in the women's calendar.
"To be able to return to the calendar," Andrea Weiss pointed out, "is a great source of pride for our territory and our tourist and sporting reality. We have already set to work to try to put on a high-level event according to Fis directives. To be side by side with Cortina d'Ampezzo, the venue of the next Olympics, at a relatively close distance, also remembering the role that the Val di Fassa has as a training centre for the Italian national Alpine skiing teams with the 'Piste Azzurre' project, is certainly a stimulus to try to give our best, dreaming of a fixed place in the next international calendars'.
The first feedback from the FIS was definitely positive, as highlighted by the Women's World Cup Director Peter Gerdol: "The La VolatA slope has proven its technicality and completeness for women already in 2021, but also with the Junior World Championships, the Universiade, and with an organisational experience of more than twenty years of European Cup events. The inspection served to survey the various quotas, organise the logistics, structure the finish area and media area, the locations and technical aspects for television filming and many other essential details. The date for the snow control was also set. It will be 12 February 2024. In a season without the Olympics and World Championships with new dates in the calendar and considering the need to balance all disciplines, we have rewarded the Val di Fassa for its organisational skills and peculiarity of predisposition to fast races.
The fact that the slope La VolatA is coming back to the World Cup is also a great reason of pride for the Ski Area San Pellegrino-Dolomiti, as highlighted by President Mauro Vendruscolo: "Inaugurated in 2017, our slope is a real feather in our cap, particularly suitable for international women's competitions, with development of 2.300 metres, an average slope of 28,4% and a maximum of 57%, a difference in height of 630 metres, which becomes 585 for the super-G, for a duration of about 1 minute and 20 minutes of competition".
