Industry News
A year after the tragic death of 19-year-old Italian ski promising star Matilde Lorenzi, investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office in Bolzano have opened a formal criminal case including two named suspects in connection with the crash. The announcement represents a significant development in what had previously been treated as a tragic but accidental training incident.
Lorenzi, a Junior National Team athlete and member of the Italian Army sports group, died on October 29, 2024, one day after a catastrophic fall during a training run on the Grawand G1 slope at the Schnalstaler Glacier/Val Senales in South Tyrol. She had secured two Italian National Championships in Super-G and Giant Slalom earlier that year and also won the National Title in the Junior Women’s Giant Slalom. She was widely viewed as one of Italy’s next big Alpine stars.
In a public statement, Lorenzi’s parents announced that the public prosecutor, Igor Secco, reopened the investigations in February 2025 after the family had shared the findings of two private experts. The family has hired a medical expert and a technical expert to investigate the circumstances of Matilde Lorenzi’s death. The medical expert, Roberto Testi, Director of Forensic Medicine of the ASL of Turin, claims that Lorenzi did not die from cranio-facial injuries from a face-first fall on the slope, as had been initially claimed. Testi’s findings conclude instead that the young Italian skier died from an impact from behind that would have caused a severe thoracic trauma and a tension pneumothorax which would have led to a cardiac arrest. Testi’s findings suggest that Lorenzi’s injuries are, in fact, inconsistent with a forward fall. The technical expert, Ernesto Rigoni, believes that Lorenzi struck a raised track edge left behind by a snow groomer. This impact could have been prevented if there had been a proper safety margin next to the training gates to allow space for ski-outs in the event of accidents or safety netting to catch athletes. Neither was present, and Rigoni considers the inadequate safety measures to be a considerable contributing factor to Matilde Lorenzi’s death.
A full investigation and an evidentiary inquest are now underway to reconstruct the events of the accident. Two individuals are now under investigation for manslaughter: Lukas Tumler, the head of slope safety at the Alpin Arena Senales ski area, and Angelo Weiss, one of Lorenzi’s coaches. For the evidentiary inquest, the Preliminary Investigations Judge has appointed two experts to provide independent opinions: Roberto Nizzi, an expert in safety on the training slopes, and Dr. Mario Domenico Gulisano, for the forensic medical investigation. The experts will establish whether the cause of death was the initial fall of the athlete along the training course or, as her parents claim, the subsequent impact against the unprotected raised edge of the piste. In particular, it must be ascertained whether removal of the raised edge or other safety measures, such as b-nets, could have prevented the death. Evidence, such as documents and videos from the Italian Ski Federation (FISI), was subpoenaed for this purpose.
Lawyers for the family say the case is based on what they describe as “important inconsistencies” in the initial inquiry: several witnesses were not heard, including Lorenzi’s assistant coach; an autopsy was not carried out; the scene of the accident was not secured and documented; and the video of the crash was not seized. In fact, it was initially claimed that there was no video of her fatal training run, but this proved to be incorrect. The investigation into Lorenzi’s death was instead closed after just 24 hours, without a proper full investigation. The video of the crash has since surfaced. It has been viewed by her family, among others, who submitted the video as evidence in February of this year, hoping it would strengthen their case to have the investigation reopened.
Meanwhile, the Lorenzi family launched the Matilde Lorenzi Foundation, through which they aim to channel their grief into funding research into new technologies that can improve safety for ski racers. The family just finished a fundraiser on October 31, which raised several thousand Euros for ski safety by auctioning ski racing memorabilia from international World Cup athletes, as well as other sporting legends.
The reopening of the investigation into Lorenzi’s death comes just a couple of months after the death of Italian World Cup racer Matteo Franzoso. Franzoso died in a training crash at La Parva, Chile, in September 2025. The death of a World Cup athlete reignited the debate around training safety and has brought Lorenzi’s case back to the front and center of ski racing safety talks.
- Related: Italian Ski Racer Succumbs to Injuries After Training Crash in Chile—1 Day Before His 26th Birthday
If accountability is established, the repercussions could range beyond this incident—fueling broader reforms in training safety, slope homologation, and athlete well-being. For Lorenzi’s family, the hope remains that her memory will become a catalyst for change in ski racing.
