The resort has come alive again this week as it hosted the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) World Championships.

The 125th anniversary of the foundation of the St Moritz Bobsleigh Club (SMBC) is also celebrated in 2023.

Winter sport became popular in the region in the late 19th century, notably with British visitors, after the entrepreneurial hotelier Johannes Badrutt of the newly built Kulm Hotel promised them that, even in winter, they would experience blue skies and sunshine. 

A bet was struck that if they were to return and find he was wrong, their stay would be at his expense.

The sky was indeed blue as the guests came back in the winter and Badrutt happily paid for their stay until March.

Tobogganing was conducted on local roads in the early years and the first bob was made in an improvised fashion.

"A rustic plank with at least half a dozen crude bits of wood across it, was laid over two long sledges,” reflected Count Renaud de la Frégeolière, a French author, destined to play a leading role in the sport as the President of the first International Federation.

Then in 1897, the SMBC was founded at the Kulm Hotel.

The objective was "to keep up interest in bobsledding in St. Moritz and to improve the sport's reputation."

Even then, the rules prescribed that there should be two women on the club’s committee.

The Cresta Run had been built along the road and a "Grand National" competition had been established as early as 1885.

"In the early hours, both ice and snow have been in capital condition and the Cresta road has been getting faster and faster," was how The Field, a magazine which covered sporting and country pursuits, described conditions in 1903.

"The run was naturally refrigerated and subject to the vagaries of the weather.

"Tobogganing, curling and bandy have continued merrily, though an adjournment to the tennis court was often necessary in the middle of the day."

In 1904 a new bob course was constructed in St Moritz over a distance of approximately 1,722 metres and at a cost of CHF11,000 (£9,700/$12,000/€11,000).

The track was naturally frozen.

"The famous 'Cresta Run' at St. Moritz is considered to be the most difficult course of its kind in the world, and which is undoubtedly the most carefully prepared course in Switzerland," wrote Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles, one of the first to take photographs of winter sports action, in an edition of Outing Magazine published in 1904.

In 1910 came a further addition to the calendar with the Curzon Cup, donated in the name of the Honourable Francis Curzon.

The winter sports scene was energised by the establishment of the Winter Olympics in the early 1920s.

An International Federation was established in 1923 and originally known as Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT). The President was De la Frégeolière. This later became the IBSF.

At the 1926 International Olympic Committee Session held in Lisbon, the host resort for 1928 was chosen.

Amsterdam had already been chosen for the Summer Games but it was geographically impossible for them to also stage the Winter Games.

Three Swiss resorts, Davos, Engelberg and St Moritz put forward their candidacy.

"It was unanimously decided that all the Games must be held in the same place and that arrangements must be made so as to allow transport of the bobsleighs and skeletons at St. Moritz," the IOC minutes stated.

The following year at the FIBT Congress, also held in St Moritz, an important resolution was passed which expanded international competition.

"It is decided to organise European Championships for the two-man bob every two years," the Congress decided.

"These are to be considered as World Championships as American bobbers will participate."

The 1928 Olympic Games were to be held over eight days including two Sundays.

The skeleton competition was delayed because of melting ice and rescheduled for 8am the following day.

Jenniston Heaton of the United States edged out his brother Jack for the gold medal by a second.

Amongst the other competitors was St Moritz regular Lord Northesk, whose full name was David Ludovic George Hopetoun Carnegie.

"A champion winter sportsman for his clever skiing and sleighing and the principal figure in several peculiar and somewhat reckless bets, usually associated with speed," reported the Dundee Evening Telegraph.

Reading between the lines, the article seems to carry just a hint of disapproval at the playboy lifestyle of his Lordship.

Northesk had been favourite for Olympic gold after winning the "Grand National" on the Cresta Run and had also won the Curzon Cup in the days before Olympic competition, but his times at the Games themselves were only good enough for bronze.

Meanwhile the American gold medallist Heaton then jumped into the second American bob.

In 1928 this was a competition for teams of five and attracted 23 crews.

Gold went to United States I who included Billy Fiske, later to become well-known as a fighter pilot before his early death.

The second American crew, including Heaton took silver, and Germany won bronze.

The first World Championships to be held at St Moritz was in 1931 but only for the four-man event.

"The track at St Moritz is currently in a state of excellent rapidity," reported the Swiss newspaper Journal de Geneve.

"This is evidenced by the improvement of the track record several times in the last few days."

Victory in the competition went to the German quartet comprising Werner Zahn, Robert Schmidt, Franz Boch and Emil Hinterfeld.

Their winning time was 2min 36.7sec to give them victory from Switzerland and a British crew drawn from the Royal Air Force.

Zahn himself had been a heroic pilot who had gallantly flown deep into enemy lines during the First World War to drop a letter to the family of a downed French pilot.

After his active career on the track, he was later a director of the Schuberth company in Braunschweig which now produces safety helmets for Formula One.

Whilst with the company, Zahn brought his expertise to bear in the production of the "Schubra" bob.

The World Championships returned to St Moritz at regular intervals over the next decade.

St Moritz was also chosen to host the 1940 Winter Olympics after the originally designated hosts Sapporo withdrew, but a dispute with the IOC saw them cede the rights.

The 1940 Olympics never took place because of the war.

In 1945, a few weeks after the Second World War had ended, the IOC Executive Board sent a circular to members with a postal voting slip in which they recommended London for the 1948 Summer Games to be preceded by Winter Games in St Moritz.

"It can be said that both Cresta-Run and Bobbahn were created in perfect condition when the new year 1948 ushered in," the official report of the 1948 Games said.

The year before, St Moritz had staged the World Championships yet again.

The results in the two-man bob gave some clues to the destiny of the Olympic medals.

It was won by the Swiss crew Fritz Feierabend and Stephan Waser.

Their compatriots Felix Endrich and Fritz Waller won silver with Belgians Max Houben and Jacques Mouvet claiming bronze.

At the Olympics, it was Endrich and Waller who prevailed.

They had built up a two second advantage on the first day and went on to claim gold from their Swiss compatriots.

Americans Fred Fortune Junior and Sky Carron took bronze but there had been a curious incident before the event.

"During the night preceding the two-man bobsled competition some unknown person or persons gained admittance to the garage where our bobsleds were housed and inflicted considerable damage to one of the sleds," the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) report recorded.

"On investigation, it was found that steering wheels had been tampered with on other sleds. It was not necessary to use the damaged sled in competition so our two man team was not handicapped," the report continued.

Later others suggested that the damage might have been the result of "careless parking."

Although there had also been damage to other sleds, Frank Tyler piloted the Americans to victory in the four-man bob.

"Needless to say, the outstanding performance turned in by the American bobsledders brought them all much acclaim, and all were trying to figure out how the Americans did it," US team manager Curtis Stevens wrote in his post Games account for the USOC official report.

"After the Olympics, a demonstration race was put on, in which anybody could ride with anybody. All our riders were flooded with requests." 

Belgium’s Houben won his first and only Olympic medal as pilot of the silver medal winning sled and 36-year-old Jim Bickford Junior took the second American sled home to bronze.

Bickford had won bronze at the 1937 World Championships and in fact all three medal winning pilots had competed pre-war at the 1936 Winter Olympics, which said much for the importance of experience.

In the skeleton, Italy’s Nino Bibbia won gold.

The competition was held over six runs and Bibbia led from round three onwards.

He lived in St Moritz and had watched the 1928 Games as a boy but this was his first victory on the circuit.

Silver went to 40-year-old Jack Heaton, a gold medallist 20 years earlier at the first St Moritz Olympics.

Britain’s John Crummond took bronze.

The World Championships returned again to St Moritz in 1955 when Fritz Feierabend marked his final appearance before retirement with the sixth World Championship gold of his career, this time in the two-man bob.

The World Championships continued to return to the resort at regular intervals and in 2020, the Olympics' five rings flew above St Moritz once again during the Youth Olympics and there was even a dead heat in the boys monobob as Alexander Czudaj of Germany shared gold with Andrei Nica of Romania.

In the women's event Georgeta Popescu, also of Romania, took gold.

Many of the greatest names of the sport are already commemorated in the turns on the course at St Moritz.

Eugenio Monti of Italy first won gold in the two-man bob at St Moritz in 1957 and repeated the feat on the same track in 1959 and 1960 as part of a sequence of five world titles in the event, with four of them going to Renzo Alvera.

Monti also won four man gold at St Moritz in 1960.

He is remembered at St Moritz by Monti’s Bolt which recalls an act of sportsmanship during the Innsbruck 1964 Winter Olympics.

During the two-man event Monti gave a bolt from his sled to British rivals Tony Nash and Robin Dixon, who went on to take gold.

They remain the only members of the SMBC to win an Olympic gold medal.

In 1965, they won World Championship gold together at St Moritz.

Another turn is named after Gunther Sachs, a German born industrialist and photographer who was briefly married to Brigitte Bardot.

He was President of the St Moritz Bob Club from 1969 until he took his own life in 2011.

Now a Hall of Fame has been established to recognise the great names of the sport.

Among the first names to be inducted are Switzerland’s Jean Wicky, Hans Leutenegger, Werner Camichel, and Edi Hubacher who won gold at the Sapporo Winter Olympics over 50 years ago.

Wicky had also won gold in the four-man bob at St Moritz in the 1968 World Championships. 

Switzerland's Erich Schärer, who won Olympic gold in the two-man bob at Lake Placid 1980 is also honoured.

He won four Olympic medals and seven world titles including gold in the 1982 competition held in St Moritz.

It remains possible for a visitor to ride the bob run, though the cost is now advertised as approximately CHF269 (£235/$291/€269).

Among the earliest to do so was King Albert of the Belgians who was taken as a passenger down the run in January 1928.

The bob was piloted by one Colonel Warwick Wright, an Englishman, with Dudley Delevingne as passengers and Northesk seated last as the brakeman.

"All went well for two runs at breakneck speed down the smooth slide, but the third time the sled started out it skidded at a corner near the top and partly overturned in a cloud of ice and snow," a report for the New York Times recorded.

"Mr. Delevingne decided just in time 'not to stand on ceremony' and grasped the King's old green hunting suit firmly by the seat of his trousers. The King and his rescuer fell off in the snow, but escaped practically unscathed."

"It was thrill of my life," The King declared.

"Nothing I experienced during the war or in motorcycling equalled this," he told reporters.

Delevigne was later the grandfather to the actress and socialite Cara Delevingne.