'We will be ready', say Winter Games organizers

ROME — Six months before the start of the Winter Olympics, Italian organizers say that, after years of ups and downs, they are on schedule.

"Preparations are progressing steadily, and according to the timeline we have set," Andrea Varnier, the chief executive officer of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee, told reporters.

The Olympic opening ceremony is on Feb 6, though curling kicks off the action two days before that. The Paralympics open a month later on March 6, with curling again breaking the ice two days earlier.

"We are currently in the core phase of operational implementation," said Varnier.

Simico, the public company responsible for delivering the Olympic facilities, last week promised that "all the planned sports construction projects will be completed before the start of the Olympics".

Organizers have made a point of delivering a low-cost Winter Games after the extravagance of recent Games.

Sochi, in Russia in 2014, cost at least $40 billion. Pyeongchang, in South Korea in 2018, came in at over $12 billion. The COVID-hit Games in Beijing in 2022 officially cost $2.24 billion in total organizational expenditure, according to the Beijing 2022 organizing committee's financial report released in May 2023.

Milano-Cortina is estimating its final bill will be $6 billion. Of that, $4 billion is going toward infrastructure, with the remaining $2 billion on staging the Games.

The Games are using a host of existing venues — emphasizing the point by holding the closing ceremony in the almost 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater in Verona. Organizers say that avoiding new construction reduces not only costs, but environmental impact.

'Complex global event'

This approach also means the Games will stretch 350 kilometers across northern Italy, from Cortina in the Dolomites in the east, to the western suburbs of Milan, with other "clusters" spread through the Alps.

"As with any complex global event, challenges are part of the process," said Varnier. "We are moving forward with confidence."

One of the few new venues will briefly be the Milano Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena, before assuming its intended role as the multipurpose Eventim Arena after the Games.

While organizers have managed to avoid being lumbered with a little-used speed-skating track by temporarily converting two exhibition halls at the Milan fair grounds, another group of sports with few participants created a political and construction headache.

Because Italy did not have a track for the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events, organizers considered using existing sites in Austria or Switzerland.

Matteo Salvini, the second-in-command and Minister of Transport of Giorgia Meloni's hard-right government, insisted in late 2023 that the events be held in Italy.

That meant a breakneck race to build a track in Cortina. It was completed just in time for pre-approval in March.

Accommodation, which often poses a logistical and financial problem for Olympic organizers, seems to be locked up.

The Milan Village, six seven-story buildings to be converted into university dorms after the Games, will be delivered in "early October", despite the recent legal troubles of its developer, the Coima group.

In Cortina, 377 prefabricated modules will be installed by the end of October.

Snow concern

While it is not clear if Italy's ski star Federica Brignone, who won the overall World Cup and a world title last season but smashed her left leg, will be fit to compete, the organizers revealed in July the design of the medals she would be chasing.

They will weigh 420 grams in bronze and 500 grams in gold and in silver.

The designer promised the medals will endure better than a few of those from last year's Paris Games. Some 220 medals, which contained a small piece of scrap metal from the Eiffel Tower, had to be replaced because they quickly turned black or rusted.

"We cannot allow what happened in Paris to happen again," said their designer Raffaella Panie.

That leaves just one unknown. The Italian meteorological service has said it is unable to predict whether there will be enough snow next February.

The organizers said they were not worried. "We'll be ready," they said.

AFP