TL;DR
Zermatt is having another crack at a World Cup downhill, and this time nobody has to cross a border. Around 13 million Swiss francs is going into rebuilding the Gornergrat piste, including a jump fed by a roughly 300-metre in-run across the roof of the Gornergrat Railway gallery, with the Matterhorn lined up behind it for the TV cameras. First men’s race is pencilled in for March 2028, pending FIS homologation.
Zermatt is chasing a World Cup downhill again, and this time the race stays on one side of the border.
Zermatt Bergbahnen plans to spend around CHF 13 million rebuilding the Gornergrat piste, with the first men’s World Cup downhill pencilled in for March 2028. The resort at the foot of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Valais appears in the provisional FIS calendar for the 2027/28 season, and it is treating this as a second attempt after the cross-border races fell through.
A rebuilt slope on the Gornergrat
Franz Julen, chairman of Zermatt Bergbahnen, is running the project. He took the plans for the new downhill to the Swiss ski team in August, and the reaction from the athletes was warm. Franjo von Allmen said that if Zermatt delivers exactly what is planned, “we will experience a truly spectacular race in March 2028.” Marco Odermatt went further on the effort involved: “In this day and age, it’s anything but a given that such a gigantic effort is made to launch a World Cup race, as the people of Zermatt are doing now.”
The upper sections of the course are being completely reconfigured and cleared. The run starts at roughly 2,850 metres and drops close to 1,000 vertical metres. The showpiece is a new jump fed by an in-run of about 300 metres that crosses the roof of the Gornergrat Railway’s gallery, positioned so that television cameras get the Matterhorn directly behind it. Project ambassador and adviser Pirmin Zurbriggen told Blick the images would be broadcast around the world and make the best possible advertisement for the sport.
