Rogla, Slovenia — The ninth stop of the 2025-26 Visa FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup kicks off this Saturday and Sunday on the resort’s 460-metre vertical, a slope that has crowned Italian riders in eight of the last ten editions. Night-time lows below freezing have turned the dual-timber run into a hard-pack racetrack where timing outweighs outright speed.
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Fischnaller Chases 25th Win and March’s Overall Lead
Roland Fischnaller, 45, has reached every Rogla final since the venue debuted on the circuit in 2013. The Italian won the inaugural race and brings a three-event winning streak into the weekend, the latest secured last Sunday at Simonhöhe by 0.12 seconds over Gabriel Messner. A fourth victory on Slovenian snow would lift his career count to 25, trim the 24-point deficit to teammate Aaron March atop the standings, and underline a season-long theme: experience still beats youth on Rogla’s 18-gate parabolic line. Olympic qualification for Milano-Cortina 2026 already locked in, Fischnaller now targets a fourth crystal globe before retirement.
Italian Men Stack Podiums Again
Italy’s parallel squad has placed two or more riders on the same podium seven times in ten races this winter, a run not seen since Austria’s mid-2000s reign. March leads the chase with 635 points, trailed by Maurizio Bormolini (611) and Daniele Bagozza (428), while rookie Gabriel Messner sits sixth. The Azzurri even swept the Carezza podium in December—only the sixth clean sweep in discipline history—showing depth beyond the headline names. No non-European rider sits inside the men’s top ten; Canada’s Arnaud Gaudet is the highest outsider at 14th.
Miki-Caffont Tie Settles on Saturday
Tsubaki Miki’s once-sizeable women’s lead vanished after Elisa Caffont’s consecutive Austrian wins leveled the pair on 660 points. The Frenchwoman owns the tie-breaker with four victories to Miki’s three, making Rogla’s parallel-giant-slalom a de-facto championship heat. Defending overall champion Miki still tops the PGS sub-rankings, yet a repeat of Caffont’s 2024 Rogla triumph would flip the narrative. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Bulgarian Malena Zamfirova became the youngest top-ten athlete since live standings began in 2009, part of a wave of teenage technical specialists entering the circuit.
Ledecka Wins on Arrival
Ester Ledecka entered her first snowboard race of the winter last Sunday and collected her 26th World Cup win barely 24 hours after landing from Tarvisio, where she had taken third in alpine Super-G. The Czech dual-sport star now owns 20 parallel-giant-slalom victories, six in her last seven snowboard starts, proving scant gate training does not dull edge pressure or tactical line choice. Her presence in Rogla start lists scrambles seeding brackets; she is slated to meet Caffont in the quarter-final round if both qualify cleanly on Saturday morning.
Repeat Winners Thrive at Rogla
Course data from the Slovenian Ski Association show Rogla has produced back-to-back victors in four of the last five seasons. Bormolini and Miki both converted here last February en route to crystal globes, echoing the 2020 campaign when Andreas Prommegger and Ramona Theresia Hofmeister used the Slovenian stop as a springboard to overall titles. Since the hill’s 2005 debut, only once—2006—have neither Italians nor Austrians finished inside the men’s overall top three, a streak March, Bormolini and Prommegger are favored to preserve given current form and forecast conditions.
Viewing Essentials for Race Day
- Women’s qualification begins at 08:30 CET Saturday, finals at 11:00; men’s knockouts start at 13:00.
- Live brackets update instantly on the FIS Snowboard app—early upsets redistribute points fast.
- Course-side split timings highlight Rogla’s flat mid-section, where glide speed often outweighs horsepower.
- Dawn weather reports matter: overnight refreeze hardens the surface and keeps winning margins under 0.25 seconds.
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Sources: FIS Snowboard, Slovenian Ski Association
Action Steps for Following Rogla Races
- Set an alarm for 08:15 CET Saturday to catch women’s qualification runs that set the knockout bracket.
- Download the free FIS Snowboard app and enable push alerts; brackets reshuffle within seconds of each heat.
- Compare live split times at gates 6 and 12—the sections where many Rogla leads are won or lost.
- Monitor overnight temperatures on the Slovenian meteorological site; any reading below –6°C signals the glazed surface Italians exploit best.
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