CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — As the world prepares for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, a largely erased chapter of sports history resurfaces from the very grounds where Olympic events will unfold. The current curling arena and mobile-home Athletes’ Village stand precisely where fascist imagery once dominated during the 1941 World Ski Championships—an event orchestrated by Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany as a propaganda spectacle.
While Cortina’s 1956 Winter Games are well documented, the 1941 championships remain conspicuously absent from official records. The International Skiing Federation (FIS) expunged all results after World War II, effectively erasing the event from historical memory. Recently discovered archival materials and amateur films reveal athletes performing Nazi salutes on podiums, swastika flags throughout the resort town, and a substantial military presence.
According to University of Bologna sports historian Nicola Sbetti, “The Italian republic has never been interested in taking responsibility for the championships.” He characterizes the event as part of an Axis powers strategy “to create a new world order” through sports, maintaining normalcy while war ravaged Europe.
The competition excluded Allied nations while featuring Axis countries and puppet states. Germany—bolstered by annexed Austria’s skiers—and Italy dominated the Alpine events, claiming all 18 medals between them. Austrian-born Josef Jennewein and German skier Christl Cranz achieved multiple gold medals, with Cranz’s record-equaling performances only recently matched by American Mikaela Shiffrin.
Communications director Max Vergani, author of “Cortina41: The Phantom World Championship,” describes how Mussolini transformed the event into a “mini-Olympics” after the cancellation of the 1944 Winter Games. The championships served as a demonstration of fascist power similar to Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Tragically, many 1941 medalists perished in subsequent war operations, including Jennewein shot down over the Soviet Union and Cranz’s brother killed on the Eastern Front. Italian slalom champion Celina Seghi continued competing after the war, eventually earning a bronze medal at the 1950 worlds before passing away in 2022 at age 102.
The FIS formally nullified the championships at its first postwar congress in 1946, with the motion passing unanimously. Today, few physical traces remain beyond souvenir shop items featuring the event’s official poster—a ghostly reminder of sports’ complex relationship with political propaganda.