While the organizers of the Engadin Skimarathon are feverishly considering how they can get more people excited to take part in the largest Swiss cross-country skiing event in the future, they have no idea that their problem will arise from a young man who on March 11, 2007 with the number 222 is at the start in Maloja and celebrates its 21st birthday on this day, will solve by itself.
Dario Cologna runs at the front throughout the race – without worrying about leadership. This is simply not expected of the youngster, who is still unknown to the general public. Shortly before the finish, Pietro Piller Cottrer increases the pace. The experienced Italian is not very fast. He wants to dup the field before it comes to the sprint. The venture fails because Cologna is following Piller Cottrer’s heels. His Swiss colleagues Toni Livers and Christian Stebler also approach Cologna. You will finish second and third. Cologna itself cannot be beaten in the sprint.
“I’ve never sat in front of so many journalists.”
It is the greatest sporting moment to date for a talent who made a classic first exclamation mark at the Junior World Championships in 2006 with a bronze over 10 km. “I’ve never sat in front of so many journalists,” said Cologna at the media conference after the race. As the first winner of the Engadin Skimarathon, the birthday child also provides information in Romansh. The Swiss triple victory is celebrated frenetically in the Swiss gazettes. With Laurence Rochat, a Swiss woman also wins among women.
From then on, and to this day, Cologna is the focus of interest when talking about Swiss cross-country skiers. 22 months after the coup in the Engadine, the Münstartaler wins the Tour de Ski for the first time. In March 2009, he became the first ever Swiss cross-country skier and the youngest in 25 years to become the overall World Cup winner. At the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, he was the first Swiss cross-country skier to win a gold medal over 15 kilometers of freestyle. He only missed a second gold medal at the games in Canada – in the prestigious “50s” – because of a fall in the finish curve.
But Cologna’s extraordinary career has been launched – and with it the image change of cross-country skiing in Switzerland – and the cross-country boom in Switzerland is likely to accentuate again in the Corona winter 2020/21.
Cologna’s career and the number of participants in the “Engadin” in the timeline
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