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The Eugenio Monti track (Italian: Pista Olimpica di Bob - Eugenio Monti ) is a bobsleigh and skeleton track located in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. It is 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 also shown during 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.
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History
Bobsleigh at Cortina d'Ampezzo was introduced in 1905-6 using a snow-covered road on the Dolomite Road between Cortina and Pocol. An attempt was made in 1911 to build an artificial bobsleigh run near the centre of Cortina, but that failed due to funding issues. 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.
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. 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. This extended the track length to 1500 metres with 15 turns and a vertical drop of 152 metres. The track hosted its first FIBT World Championships in 1937 in the two-man event. 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. 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.
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. Following the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, track officials added large scoreboards, and electronic timing and scoring. The track used for the 1956 Winter Olympics was 1720 metres long with 16 turns and an elevation drop of 152 metres. 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.
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. 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. 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.
By 1989 the track was deemed safe enough by the FIBT to host another world championship. Following the death of Eugenio Monti in 2003, the Olympic Bobrun Cortina was renamed the Eugenio Monti piste (track in (Italian)) early the following year. 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. 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. The track is now artificially refrigerated.
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. 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%.