Austria’s Tirol province has the strongest ski traditions of any region in the world, and they go back to the very start of skiing. The Ski Club Arlberg, founded in 1902 in St Anton, marked the start of the style of downhill skiing we still enjoy to this day. Local boy Hannes Schneider was the first global superstar of skiing, taking the sport to Japan and the USA.
In the 1950s Kitzbühel’s “Ski Wonder Team” played a legendary role in the history of Kitzbühel, with the town supplying the best skiers in the world – Sailer, Hinterseer, Leitner, Molterer, Huber and Pravda – together winning 27 medals in the Winter Olympics and World Skiing Championships.
The Olympia SkiWorld Innsbruck is, along with London, one of two cities worldwide to have hosted three Olympic Games. In Innsbruck’s case it was the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics along with the first Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2012.
In the 1970s Ellmau in the SkiWelt conceived a visionary project, the construction of the Hartkaiser funicular railway. Over four decades it carried 34 million passengers but was finally replaced in 2015 by a new gondola with spacious cabins, heated seats and wi-fi.
Things continue to develop in the Tirol to this day with big new projects almost every ski season, it seems. One of the biggest in recent years was the connection of the Alpbach and Wildschönau Valleys to form the new Ski Jewel ski resort with 109km connected by 46 lifts, and this season the Arlberg will become Austria’s largest interconnected ski area with the opening of the new Flexenbahn cable car.
