Eugenio Monti Olympic Track

Unidentified bobsleigh during practice at the track in 2007
Full name	Pista olimpica Eugenio Monti
Address	via Ronco
Location	Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
Owner	Comune di Cortina d'Ampezzo
Operator	Bob Club Cortina
Surface	Artificial-refrigerated concrete
Construction
Broke ground	1923
Opened	1923
Renovated	1936, 1948, 1956, 1981, 2026
Closed	2008

The Eugenio Monti Olympic Track (Italian: Pista olimpica Eugenio Monti ^[1] ) was a bobsleigh and skeleton track located in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. It was named after Eugenio Monti (1928–2003), who won six bobsleigh medals at the Winter Olympic Games between 1956 and 1968 and ten medals at the FIBT World Championships between 1957 and 1966. It was featured in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, held after the 1981 FIBT World Championships, before the track was shortened to its current configuration. In January 2008, after one last bobsleigh race tournament, the track was closed.

History

Bobsleigh at Cortina d'Ampezzo was introduced in 1905-6 using a snow-covered road on the Dolomite Road between Cortina and Pocol.^[2] An attempt was made in 1911 to build an artificial bobsleigh run near the centre of Cortina, but that failed due to funding issues.^[2] By 1923, a new track 1200 metres in length, was constructed in Ronco, a village near Cortina on the Dolomite Road laid with special water piping constructed into the earth and covered with turf to allow for track freezing.^[2]

The track made its international debut in 1928 at the International University Winter Games (forerunner of the Winter Universiade, under administration by the International University Sports Federation), giving the track first notice, increasing its growth.^[2] Rebuilding of the track occurred in 1936 to meet the standards of other tracks such as St. Moritz, Switzerland and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany with the finish of the track moving down to the bank of the Boite River.^[2] This extended the track length to 1500 metres with 15 turns and a vertical drop of 152 metres.^[2] The track hosted its first FIBT World Championships in 1937 in the two-man event.^[2][3] Two years later, it hosted the four-man event of the FIBT World Championships though it would lead to the death of Swiss bobsledder Reto Capadrutt during competition.^[4][5] Another renovation occurred with the track after World War II in 1948, when all of the turns were rebuilt and the track lengthened to 1700 metres and 16 turns.^[2]

When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1956 Winter Olympics to Cortina, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) took over all operations and improvement of the track at considerable expense.^[2] Following the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, track officials added large scoreboards, and electronic timing and scoring.^[2] The track used for the 1956 Winter Olympics was 1720 metres long with 16 turns and an elevation drop of 152 metres.^[2] When a bobsleigh track was not built for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California in the United States, the track in Cortina was used to host the world championships that year in place of being excluded from the Winter Olympic Games.^[3]

The track played a key role in improving bobsleigh safety when West Germany's Toni Pensperger was killed during the four-man event at the 1966 World Championships.^[6] Because of Pensperger's death, the world championships did not take place at the track until safety improvements were made satisfactory to the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT). This was not until 1981, though the death of American bobsledder James Morgan during the four-man event on February 8 led to track officials shortening the course to its current configuration.^[7] The week following the 1981 championships, the track was filmed as part of the movie For Your Eyes Only; one of the stuntmen involved, Paolo Rigon, was killed during the first day of filming.^[8][9]

By 1989 the track was deemed safe enough by the FIBT to host another world championship.^[3] Following the death of Eugenio Monti in 2003, the Olympic Bobrun Cortina was renamed the Eugenio Monti Track (Italian: Eugenio Monti pista) early the following year.^[10] The track was awarded the 2011 World Championships in June 2007 over Winterberg, Germany and was to have undergone homologation to involve skeleton (last competed in 1992) though that was not done during the 2007-08 Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Cup season.^[11][12] Following some issues with the city of Cortina, the track withdrew its bid to host the 2011 championships so the FIBT awarded the championships instead to Königssee, Germany.^[13] The track is now artificially refrigerated.^[14]

On October 16, 2023 it was reported that the track will not be rebuilt to host the Olympic Winter Games. The sliding sport portion of the 2026 Games will be held outside of Italy.

Track statistics

The track used for the 1956 Winter Olympics had 16 curves that was 1,700 meters long with an elevation difference of 152 meters.^[2] Turns 3 and 5 were not named.

Following the 1981 FIBT World Championships, the track was shortened to 1350 meters in length with 13 curves, an elevation drop of 120.45 meters, a maximum grade of 15.9%, and an average grade of 9.3%.^[15][16]

Track records^[16]

Sport	Record	Nation - athlete(s)	Date	Time (seconds)
Bobsleigh two-man	Start	Canada - Pierre Lueders & Giulio Zardo	January 19, 2002	4.84
Bobsleigh two-man	Track	Germany - Thomas Florschütz & Sascha Scheleter	January 12, 2006	52.80
Bobsleigh four-man	Start	Switzerland - Martin Annen, Andreas Gees, Beat Hefti, & Cedric Grand	December 19, 2004	4.74
Bobsleigh four-man	Track	France - Bruno Mingeon, Emmanuel Hostache, Christophe Fourquet, & Max Robert	January 16, 2000	51.96
Bobsleigh two-woman	Start	Canada - Helen Upperton & Jennifer Ciochetti	January 12, 2007	5.29
Bobsleigh two-woman	Track	Germany - Sandra Kiriasis & Romy Logsch	January 12, 2007	54.60

Championships hosted

• Winter Olympics: 1956
• FIBT World Championships: 1937 (Two-man),^[3] 1939 (Four-man),^[4] 1950, 1954, 1960 (Extraordinary event since bobsleigh was not included for the 1960 Winter Olympics), 1966, 1981, 1989 (Bobsleigh only), 1999 (Bobsleigh only)
• Bobsleigh European Championship: 1965, 1970, 1982, 2000, 2002, 2007
• Bobsleigh Italian Championship: 1930, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008

Gallery

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  San Marino 1956 stamp

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  Henry Taylor driving a Ford Cortina down the bobsleigh run (auto-bobbing)