Val di fassa audi fis ski world cup 2024

Women’s Alpine Skiing world excellence hits the tracks of Val di Fassa, for two days of great races in the presence of Unesco’s Dolomites. On Saturday, February 24, and Sunday, February 25, 2024, the “La VolatA” slope will host the Val di Fassa Audi FIS Ski World Cup 2024 with two super-G races.

La VolatA, which starts in Falcade (BL) and arrives at Passo San Pellegrino, in Trentino, has become the temple of international skiing, hosting in 2021 the Ski World Cup Val di Fassa, the women’s ski World Cup. This challenging course owes its name to its technical characteristics: the run descends through the Col Margherita Park, for a length of 2,400 m, with 630 m of difference in altitude and slopes that verge on a 50% gradient. A true highlight among the offerings of the Alpine arc, suitable for the most demanding skiers. The starting point is a tribute to the Dolomites with an extraordinary natural terrace at 2,514 metres: enclosed in an amphitheatre of attractive peaks, the Col Margherita is an adrenalin rush even for the eyes.

For a lifetime, Alberto Vendruscolo has built roads where there were none and seen routes where others did not. It was in his DNA, and was his job as a road builder and owner of the company that still bears his surname. This was also the case for the ‘La VolatA’, the black run that he dreamed of completing to connect the Col Margherita to the San Pellegrino Pass. A venture considered by many to be ‘crazy’ and realised by his son Mauro, the current president of Funivia Col Margherita. Those capitals ‘V’ and ‘A’ are a tribute to those who dreamed of this run, without being able to see their dream come true. “Making a piste there is a bit of a crazy idea,” Mauro Vendruscolo was heard to say. It was not just a matter of creating a trail that would start in one region, Veneto, and finish in another, Trentino. What made the idea seem crazy were those gaps in the rock at the end, where even imagining a route seemed impossible. Yet Mauro could clearly make out that line among the Col Margherita’s snowpacks, just as his father Alberto had imagined it. The dream of both was to complete that first steep section created in the late 1980s by Livio Sommariva, the first president of the Funivia Col Margherita company. In 1982, with the installation of the ski lift of the same name, the first step was taken towards the creation of the Ski Area San Pellegrino, connecting the San Pellegrino Pass, in the province of Trento, to the 2,514 metres of the Col Margherita in the territory of Falcade (BL) in just a few minutes. The completion of ‘La VolatA’ was first set down on paper in 2011 but it was only a few years later that the project became a reality, shortly afterwards hosting a competition at the highest level: the Val di Fassa Junior World Championships. Today what Alberto Vendruscolo envisioned between those rocks is a World Cup run.

A piste that puts the most experienced skiers to the test

From the porphyry terrace which looks over the splendid Pale San Martino, the descent becomes immediately technique with the two walls, one after the other, “Alberto” and “Manfroi “, before entering the “Piana” that, passing through the wood and making a sharp bend to the left, leads to the steep and never-ending walls “del Poeta”, to launch into the last pitfalls, namely the thrilling hump “del camoscio” and the long final schuss, that projects the athletes at full speed to the finish line, just beside the cable car bottom station.

During the Val di Fassa Ski World Cup 2020/2021 the Italian champion Federica Brignone commented in a story on Instagram about her race on La VolatA: “Racing in heaven”.