Spotlight: Remembering the Trentino 2013 Winter Universiade

It was the men’s ice-hockey final, played at the Gianmarco Scola Ice Arena in the mountain village of Alba di Canazei, that capped off a successful 26th edition of the Winter Universiade.

When it was staged, Trentino 2013 was the biggest Winter Universiade in history in terms of numbers of participants, eventually surpassed by the Krasnoyarsk 2019 edition. With more than 2,500 participants, it was an event to remember. It was also the sixth time that the FISU Winter Universiade was staged in Italy.

Over the eleven days of competition, 78 medal events were held in 12 sports: Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Cross-Country Skiing, Curling, Figure Skating, Freestyle, Ice Hockey, Nordic Combined, Short Track, Ski Jumping, Snowboarding and Speed Skating.

Eight Universiade Records were broken in short track alone, while no less than thirteen in speed skating. It was Russia that finished on top of the medals tally, followed by Poland and Korea.

Canadian women continued to dominate ice-hockey, as they won gold for a third straight time, with silver and bronze going to Russia and USA respectively. The men’s ice-hockey gold was also won by Canada after thriller of a game against Kazakhstan.

Trentino 2013 was also one of the biggest in terms of the sheer volume of television production. More than 200 hours of competition broadcast was produced, of which more than 70 hours were live on both Eurosport and RaiSport in the home nation, Italy.

In his closing speech, then FISU President Claude-Louis Gallien said to the host city “You opened your heart to the youth of the entire world and to the FISU Family, be sure that we will never forget you!”

And with that, the FISU Flag was passed onto the Organising Committee of the Granada 2015 Winter Universiade.