Zermatt wants to go down in history with the longest Ski World Cup downhill run

Zermatt wants to go down in history with the longest Ski World Cup downhill run

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Zermatt – The ski aces know Zermatt, a municipality in the Visp district in the Swiss canton of Valais, from their training camps. And now Zermatt is listening. You tinker with the longest World Cup downhill run. This could become reality in two years’ time in November. A day after the dispute between the organizing committee and the Swiss ski association around the Lauberhorn races in Wengen continued to escalate, the Valais pricked up their ears. Mountain railway president Franz Julen dreams of a departure from Switzerland to Italy.

The starting house should be at almost 3,900 meters above sea level, and the runway should be a good five kilometers long. From the Klein Matterhorn, the ski racers would cross the state border into the Aosta Valley. To make this feasible, you can see that the construction of the railway from Testa Grigia to the Klein Matterhorn will be completed in autumn this year. Julen wants the race and also wishes that the women would drive. If it worked, the route would be the longest run in the world.

In Zermatt, many are behind the project. Still FIS President Gian Franco Kasper is full of praise if one went down in Zermatt in November. That would fit well in the calendar. Swiss Ski Director Bernhard Aregger also sees this as a great opportunity to enrich the World Cup calendar positively. The slope runs mainly over glaciers. So you have to set up safety nets and secure the route from A to Z. In terms of construction, you hardly have to intervene in nature and you don’t have to cut down trees. The ski racers compete in a sustainable winter landscape.

Julen does not want to harm Wengen or count as a competitor. Because he also knows that a World Cup calendar without the classic in the Bernese Oberland would be one attraction poorer, almost an own goal of skiing. We are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the smoldering dispute between Swiss-Ski and Wengen and whether or not we will see the two longest runs on Swiss snow.

Report for skiweltcup.tv: Andreas Raffeiner

Source: bote.ch

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