CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — The Dolomites do not do anything quietly. Every morning the towers and faces catch the sunrise in a sequence of pinks and reds that turns tourist cameras into performance art installations. Every afternoon the thunderclouds build over the limestone battlements to the north. In between, on this last week of June, the town of Cortina d'Ampezzo fills with trail runners from fifty countries and the particular compressed energy of a race week that everyone in the field has been waiting months to start.
The Lavaredo Ultra Trail by UTMB opened today — registration day, athlete briefings, the 10K night race for those who want to start the week moving through darkness. The serious races don't start until Friday and Saturday, but anyone who thinks race week doesn't begin until the gun fires for the flagship has misunderstood what brings people here.
What the Dolomites Are, and Why They Matter
Cortina d'Ampezzo sits at 1,224 metres above sea level in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, surrounded on every side by a mountain architecture unlike anything else on earth. The Dolomites — UNESCO World Heritage since 2009, and Winter Olympics host this past February — are not merely scenery. They are a specific geological formation: massive towers and walls of light-coloured carbonate rock, exposed by erosion over 250 million years, that create a landscape of vertical drama and horizontal openness simultaneously.
For a trail running race, this setting produces something important. The Tre Cime di Lavaredo — the Three Peaks, at 2,999 metres — is the landmark the race is named for. When the 120K field passes beneath those three pinnacles on Friday night and Saturday morning, in whatever light remains from whatever moon phase the calendar offers, the athletes who have been running for eight or nine hours will pass through a place that has inspired artists, mountaineers, and writers since the nineteenth century. This does not make the race easier. It makes it more significant.
Today: Registration and the 10K Night Race
Race week opens with athlete registration in the Palazzo del Cinema on Corso Italia — the main pedestrian street that will serve as the 120K start and finish line on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. The registration village is operating from 09:00; every runner collecting their bib has, at minimum, a 10K to 120K somewhere between now and Sunday morning.
Tonight's 10K race launches from Fiames, a hamlet at the base of Faloria mountain on Cortina's eastern edge. The 10K is the entry format — 200 metres of elevation gain, 10 kilometres of trail, a night sky over the Ampezzo Valley. It is the race for those who want to participate in Lavaredo without committing to what the 50K, 80K, or 120K will ask of them. It is also, for some people in tonight's field, a first taste of what UTMB World Series racing feels like on the ground.
The 20K launches Thursday afternoon from Corso Italia. The 50K follows on Friday morning. The flagship 120K starts from Corso Italia at 23:00 on Friday — a night start through the town, headlamps on, the spectators who line Corso Italia making enough noise to carry runners to the edge of the valley before the darkness closes in.
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The flagship race covers 120 kilometres with 5,800 metres of positive elevation gain and the corresponding descent. The maximum cut-off time is 30 hours. Entry requires a valid 100K or 100M UTMB Index — this is not a first-ultra race. The athletes who will start at 23:00 on Friday night have done the qualifying work to be here.
The route circumnavigates the Sesto Dolomites Natural Park, moving through the Ampezzo Valley, into the high passes above Cortina, past the Tre Cime di Lavaredo somewhere in the small hours of Saturday morning, through the Auronzo basin and back toward Cortina from the south. The terrain is predominantly high-altitude single track, via ferrata approach paths, and mountain passes. There are sections above 2,500 metres. There are descents that will punish anyone who descends faster than their legs can absorb after 70 kilometres of running.
Finishing yields 4 Running Stones in the UTMB World Series system — the maximum allocation for a single race at this distance. For athletes working toward a UTMB Mont-Blanc qualifier, this is a significant calculation.
The Field and the Atmosphere
The Lavaredo start list this year includes elite runners from across the European and North American mountain ultra circuit. The 80K and 120K fields carry a concentration of UTMB-calibre athletes who are using this race as either a qualifier, a fitness test ahead of UTMB in late August, or a destination race in its own right. The Dolomites do not require a race calendar to justify visiting — but having 4 Running Stones waiting at the finish line of the 120K tends to sharpen the motivation.
Cortina d'Ampezzo in late June carries the particular energy of a mountain resort town that has just hosted the Winter Olympics and is now hosting something entirely different. The infrastructure is there — restaurants full, hotels occupied, the gondola systems not running but the approach roads busy with athletes who have come to run up the same mountains that ski racers came down in February. The context sits oddly and works perfectly.
What to Watch This Week
The 120K field and its results will take shape from midnight Friday into Saturday afternoon. The 80K — which starts Saturday morning from Val Marzon above Auronzo di Cadore and arrives in Cortina — will produce a separate narrative. The 50K, which is a full-day effort in its own right at 2,600 metres of climbing, starts Friday morning while the 120K field is already deep in the mountains.
By Sunday evening, when the final runners cross the Lavaredo finish line on Corso Italia, the race will have produced a week of results across five distances, five start times, and five very different experiences of the same Dolomite landscape.
For the full guide to running the 120K yourself — the route, the logistics, the gear requirements, and what the Tre Cime section looks like from the course — see our companion Lavaredo 120K Race the Route guide. For more of what's happening in this week's trail running calendar, see our Western States 100 pre-race field report from Olympic Valley, California.
Race programme and elevation data via lavaredo.utmb.world. Field coverage by ZealZag Team.
