Big Air is the next big thing at the next Winter Olympics in South Korea in just over a year’s time, but in Chamonix they’ve been enjoying getting airborne from the snow for many years, including back at the very first Winter Olympics that we staged here in 1924 – when ski jumping was officially an Olympic sport but downhill ski racing wasn’t!
The first skis had been introduced to the valley some 30 years before at the end of the 1800s, and Arnold Lunn, an early pioneer of both ski racing and organised ski holidays for Brits, learned to ski here at that same time.
Over the intervening 120 years, Chamonix has gone from strength to strength, and is now widely regarded as the planet’s capital of mountain sports, year round. Located in one of the world’s most extensive networks of ski runs and lifts and home to the biggest lift-served vertical on the planet, as well as its longest off-piste run, the famed Vallée Blanche, all providing outstanding skiing, there’s simply nowhere quite like Chamonix.
And although it may be a historic Alpine town, Chamonix never rests on its laurels, and is also a holiday resort with state-of-the art amenities (including its ski jumps, ice-rinks, swimming pools, cinema and interactive museums) as well as being a Mecca for shopping and fine dining.
