The curtains will be raised on the Olympic snowboarding season and the Italian national slopestyle and snowboard cross teams are ready for their debut in the World Cup, the first major event that will ‘prepare’ the Italian athletes for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games, which will take place in South Korea between 9 and 25 February.

First up on the New Zealand snow is the World Cup slopestyle team, who are taking part in the first stage of the season in Cardrona, where the qualifiers will take place on Sunday 3 September, with the final happening the following day. The coach Cesare Pisoni put together a trio made up of Nicola Liviero, Alberto Maffei and Emil Zulian, who will be followed by the coach Filippo Kratter.

The qualifiers will take place on Friday 8 September, then on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September Italy will make its snowboard cross debut, as the athletes are ready to test themselves on the Argentinian slopes of Cerro Catedral.

Departing for South America are Omar Visintin, Luca Matteotti, Emanuel Perathoner, Fabio Cordi, Tommaso Leoni, Michele Godino, Lorenzo Sommariva, Michela Moioli and Raffaella Brutto.

The parallel slalom team, however, must wait until December for the first World Cup race that is due to be held in Carezza. In the meantime, the Italian team is preparing for the new get together at Stelvio Pass, scheduled for Monday 4 to Thursday 7 September. The sports director Cesare Pisoni has brought together Roland Fischnaller, Aaron March, Christoph Mick, Maurizio Bormolini, Edwin Coratti, Mirko Felicetti, Nadya Ochner and Elisa Profanter. Coordinating the work is coach Meinhard Erlacher and trainer Rudy Galli.