Qualla: Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track

Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarinaSimic, CC BY-SA 4.0. The graffiti came first. After the fighting stopped and the landmines were cleared, before any official renovation began, someone painted the concrete curves of the abandoned bobsled track on Mount Trebevic in bright, clashing colours. The murals turned a war ruin into an unlikely tourist attraction -- visitors hiking up from Sarajevo to walk the length of a track that had once carried Olympic athletes at 120 kilometres per hour and then, eight years later, sheltered artillery positions during the longest siege in modern warfare. The Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track is one of the most photographed ruins in the Balkans, and one of the strangest: a piece of sporting infrastructure designed for speed and celebration, repurposed for destruction, then left to the forest and the spray cans.

Image: MarinaSimic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track: Two Weeks of Glory on Trebevic

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit xinem from GR, USA, CC BY 2.0. When Sarajevo was awarded the 1984 Winter Olympics in 1977, the city needed a bobsled and luge facility from scratch. Architect Gorazd Bucar designed a track on the slopes of Mount Trebevic, the 1,629-metre peak that rises directly above the city's eastern neighbourhoods. Constru...

Image: xinem from GR, USA | CC BY 2.0

Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track: When the Mountain Became a Weapon

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah Wattouat, CC BY 3.0. The same elevation that made Trebevic ideal for winter sports made it strategically valuable during the Bosnian War. When Bosnian Serb forces besieged Sarajevo beginning in April 1992, they occupied the surrounding heights, including Trebevic. The bobsled track, with its reinforc...

Image: Sarah Wattouat | CC BY 3.0

Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track: Colour on the Ruins

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julian Nyča, CC BY-SA 3.0. For two decades, the track sat in the forest on Trebevic, gradually claimed by vegetation and graffiti artists. The concrete chute, with its banked curves disappearing into the trees, became one of the most recognizable images of post-war Sarajevo -- a metaphor almost too obvious...

Image: Julian Nyča | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track: The Slow Return of Athletes

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Damien Halleux Radermecker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Beginning in 2014, after an extensive demining operation cleared the mountainside, limited renovations started with a grant from the International Luge Federation. The goal was modest at first: prepare the track for summer training, which does not require refrigeration. It worked...

Image: Damien Halleux Radermecker | CC BY-SA 2.0