Milan Cortina, Italy starts with a bang! Giovanni Franzoni and Dominik Paris immediately to medal.

The first race with medals up for grabs in Milan Cortina 2026 immediately makes Italian fans rejoice: in the men’s Olympic downhill, in fact, the Italian team celebrates the silver of Giovanni Franzoni and the bronze of Dominik Paris, in the race won by Franjo von Allmen (who thus gives the first gold of the 25th edition of the Winter Games to Switzerland). The two Azzurri overtook the phenomenon Marco Odermatt, who surprisingly finished at the foot of the podium and was distanced by twenty hundredths net just from Paris.

Franzoni, already a star this year in the World Cup with victories in the Super-G in Wengen and in the downhill on the legendary Streif in Kitzbühel, came within 20 hundredths of the gold medal, but his silver is nonetheless a confirmation of steady growth for the 2001 class, now a certainty for the Azzurri of Alpine skiing. Paris, on the other hand, manages, coming within 50 cents of the winner, to break the taboo at Five Circles at the “venerable” age of 36, bringing home a bronze that tastes like gold after the disappointments of previous participations, from Vancouver 2010 onward.

Francesco Lucivero

As for what concerns the other placings, the first of the disappointments is certainly Odermatt, dominant in the World Cup but unable to get on the podium in the Olympic downhill. Behind him is another Helvetic, Alexis Monney, who precedes instead two Austrians, Vincent Kriechmayr and Daniel Hemetsberger. Closing out the Top 10 of the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic downhill are France&#8217s Nils Allegre, Canada&#8217s James Crawford and USA&#8217s Kyle Negomir, who denies the Top 10 to Azzurro Mattia Casse by only eight hundredths.

That of the men&#8217s downhill is only the first medal awarded in alpine skiing: the next race is scheduled for Sunday, February 8, with the’other downhill, the women&#8217s, on which other high hopes are pinned as far as the Italian colors are concerned, with several athletes capable of finishing in the top positions.

As for the other finals on Saturday, however, the Olympic program includes the women&#8217s 10km+10km skiathlon final, the women&#8217s 3,000-meter speed skating final, the men&#8217s big air snowboarding and the women&#8217s ski jumping, with the latter awarding the last medal of the first day.