Founded by the Agnelli family, owner of the FIAT group, in the 1920's, Sestriere has strong tradition to ski racing. Its demanding slopes soon drew competitive skiers and in the 1950's the Arlberg-Kandahar Committee included the modern resort in their racing tour along with St Anton, Murren, Chamonix and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In 1967 the first World Cup circuit staged a two downhills for women and men on the difficult Banchetta slope. More competitions were held in Sestriere until 1971 when it pulled out of the International circuit, cutting its ties with the traditional Alberg-Kandahar serie.
In 1984, the resort got back into the race business and since then Sestriere is regularly on the World Cup circuits. Sestriere created great excitement in the mid 1990's when it installed a powerful light system which allows night races. In fact, the slaloms of the 1997 FIS World Championships took place at dark in front of a huge crowd. This idea was imitated by many other organizers such as Sierra Nevada, in Spain, Schladming in Austria, and Berchtesgaden in Germany. Sestriere, which will host the Alpine events of the 2006 Winter Olympics given by the IOC to Turin, lays in the middle of a huge network of ski lifts. The entire setting, known as the "Via Lattea" - the "Milky Way" - includes several ski areas and over 350 km of trails some of them in nearby Montgenevre, in France.