Snow Rugby in Tarvisio, Italy
Today, the Energy Travel Italian office is helping us to get to know about Snow Rugby, a relatively new-take and very distinct variant on the game we know. As you can guess, it involves playing rugby on snow in magnificent locations in the Italian Dolomites and Austrian Alps. Caterina Fiorini, staff member and player at Alp Rugby Tarvisio, talks to us about this very particular version of Rugby and about the plans for the future at her Snow Rugby association.
Caterina, tell us something about yourself and about Alp Rugby Tarvisio.
I live near Tarvisio in Italy. It is an alpine resort and from a young age I always took part in cross country and athletics. An old school friend introduced me to rugby, though very late on, in fact I was 35 years old when I started to play for Alp Rugby Tarvisio, a rugby club made up of only female teams. Over the years I have become involved in the organization of the club’s Snow Rugby Festivals and I deal with the promotion of the tournament and the recruitment of teams to take part.
Can you tell us about the origins of Snow Rugby in Italy and in the rest of the world, what are its main features?
Snow Rugby was created 13 years ago, the brainchild of the President of Alp Rugby Tarvisio - Alberto Stendardo – he had seen Beach Rugby, and thought to himself, why not make the same competition in winter, on snow?!
Since Alberto is from Tarvisio and for many months of the year our rugby team trains in the snow anyway, he thought it was worth trying to create a format here in Tarvisio, on the snow with the same rules as Beach Rugby: 5 against 5: 31-metres long pitch and 25-metres wide: 2 halves of 5 minutes.
From the off, we loved it simply due to the power of the games which are played with a spectacular level of intensity without the pauses for lineouts or scrums. The first edition of a tournament was held in 2013 with 10 men's teams and the following year the women's tournament was added, the last edition in 2020 saw the participation of 32 teams.
In the rest of the world, snow rugby is particularly popular in Russia and the United States, both of which have a variety of tournaments.
As Snow Rugby is played in the mountains and on snow, the temperature is an important consideration, can you describe the clothing required to play Snow Rugby?
On the upper body we wear a rugby shirt that can then be covered with winter clothing. On the lower part of the body, we usually wear cross-country trousers though some “daredevils” even play in shorts. It is advisable to wear gloves. For boots, we wear rugby ones, though some players cover them with plastic bags, hoping to keep their feet less wet as snow gets in everywhere!
How are snow rugby pitches prepared and what’s it like to play on them?
The Tarvisio pitch is built at the base to the Prampero ski slope which is the location of the finish line to the ski world cup race that it hosts. Tarvisio has bobcat snow machines that transport the soft snow, flatten it out and make it into a Rugby Arena. The first teams to play find a regular, flat, white pitch, but after the first game, the surface becomes uneven, just like it does on the beach for Beach Rugby. As games are played and the snow is stepped on and moved about, the pitch becomes softer and softer and although it is cold, there’s no problem when you are tackled or fall over.