Cortina

Cortina d'Ampezzo sits in the Dolomites, and for a century the ice has been the club's as much as the skiers'. What became SG Cortina started life in 1924 as Gruppo Sportivo Dolomiti Cortina, took the name HC Cortina five years later, and in 1935, under pressure from the fascist regime, was forced into the name it still carries.

Built up for the 1956 Winter Olympics, when it briefly held 12,000 to 15,000 people, it later sat without a roof, and the club paid for it: lacking a covered arena, SG Cortina folded in 1999/2000 and had to work its way back up from Serie B. Only once the stadium was rebuilt and roofed between 2002 and 2003 could the team return to Serie A, at its now-regular capacity of 2,700.

Eighteen Serie A titles, stretching from 1932 to 2025, make Cortina one of the most decorated names in Italian hockey, though a second financial crisis in 2010/11 nearly ended the club a second time. The rivalry that matters most is with Asiago, played out as the Derby Veneto.

Ask around the rink about who best represents the club's identity and the name that comes back is Giorgio De Bettin, the club's all-time leading scorer, a player whose career at Cortina spans the kind of years most clubs only get to claim once.