Here's an update with the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics less than a year away

Boston Globe

15-02-2025

San Siro, the Opening Ceremony site that accommodates more than 80,000, was erected in 1926. It's the home of the AC Milan and Inter Milan soccer teams.
The San Siro, home of soccer teams AC Milan and Inter Milan, will be site of the Opening Cerenony.
Marco Luzzani/Getty
Verona Arena, the Roman amphitheater that was built in 30 AD and still is used for opera, will stage the Closing Ceremony not far from where Romeo closed out Tybalt.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
The skiing venues in the Alps and Dolomites up north have been fixtures on the global circuit. The Stelvio downhill course in Bormio, which has held men's Alpine events for more than three decades, is one of the planet's most challenging tracks.
Advertisement
Cortina's Olimpia delle Tofane slope, one of the 1956 Games venues and a perennial Cup stop, will stage the women's Alpine races. Val di Fiemme, the annual site of the Tour de Ski finale, will handle cross-country. Anterselva, which has hosted the world championships a half-dozen times in the past half-century, will hold the biathlon events.
Curling will be conducted at the rink that featured men's hockey in 1956. And the Forum di Milano, the 15,800-seat arena built in 1990 and renovated in 2015, will be the home of figure skating and short-track speedskating.
That said, existing often means expensive to update. The outdoor speedskating oval at Baselga di Pine, the longtime venue for the national championships, required a roof that would have cost $50 million.
So the organizers built a temporary facility at the Fiera Milano Rho complex for less than half the price.
The more pressing challenge is the sliding track in Cortina, where the bobsled, skeleton, and luge events will take place. The plan was to rebuild the Eugenio Monti track that dates back a century and has been refashioned four times, but the $80 million price tag was daunting.
Advertisement
Since the facility that Turin built at Cesana Pariol has been abandoned for more than a decade and likely will be torn down, the IOC recommended that the events be shifted to the Innsbruck track in Austria or the St. Moritz run in Switzerland, but the Italian government balked at having events outside the country.
Thus, the ongoing rush to build a new Cortina run that will cost $88 million. If it can't be finished in time to be internationally tested — the completion date is March, maybe — the backup site is Lake Placid's 1980 track at Mount Van Hoevenberg, only 3,600 miles away.
No need, Cortina insists.
'There is no Plan B for bobsleigh,' said mayor Gianluca Lorenzi. 'The track will be built here.'
For the first time since Turin played host two decades ago, the Winter Games are coming back to the center of Europe, where they first were held in France in 1924.
In the wake of the Beijing Olympics, which were marred by inflexible COVID restrictions and the Chinese government's intrusive surveillance, the Italians are eager to revive the intimate and authentic atmosphere that Cortina created seven decades ago.
That was the first time that the Soviet Union turned up for the Winter Games. And unless the war in Ukraine is settled in the upcoming months, this will be the first time that the Russians are excluded.
Three years ago in Beijing, as punishment for widespread and blatant doping, they were a team without an identity, forbidden to use their flag, anthem, colors, or national name. Yet the 'ROC' still won 32 medals, second only to Norway.
Advertisement
But Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made it a five-ringed pariah, its athletes unwelcome on the winter World Cup circuits and at global championships.
Without one of the planet's most dominant countries, the Russian government says that these Games would be viewed as bogus.
'The grandchildren will ask some champions in 20 or 30 years, 'Old man, you won gold, but who did you win against?' ' said sports minister Mikhail Degtyarev, who doubles as head of the national Olympic Committee. 'There was no one of ours [Russians], so you are a fake champion.'
The Russians are hoping that the successor to retiring IOC president Thomas Bach, who'll be chosen at next month's session, will advocate lifting the blanket ban. Or at least allow 'individual neutral athletes' who haven't supported the war to compete.
A successor to retiring IOC president Thomas Bach will be chosen next month.
MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images
That was the policy for last summer's Paris Olympics, but only 15 eligible Russians chose to participate, and they won only one medal. So far there seems to be a willingness to take the same approach for Milan-Cortina.
The International Skating Union will allow one Russian entry in each event in figure skating and long- and short-track speedskating.
Although they're excluded from this year's World Championships, the athletes will have a chance to qualify at a special figure skating event in Beijing in September and during next fall's speedskating season.
'This is definitely better than a final divorce and self-isolation,' Degtyarev conceded.
The Americans, who were fourth in the medal table in Beijing with 25, would benefit from a diminished Russian presence, especially in figure skating.
Advertisement
The United States is unlikely to surpass the Norwegians, who claimed 22 medals in cross-country skiing and biathlon in 2022, or the Germans, who amassed 16 in the sliding sports.
But given their dominance in freestyle skiing and snowboarding, which produced a dozen medals, the Yanks should be good for third.
Five of their six individual gold medalists — snowboarders Chloe Kim and Lindsey Jacobellis, freestyle skier Alex Hall, speedskater Erin Jackson, and bobsledder Kaillie Humphries — still are competing.
So are Beijing veterans Jessie Diggins, now the world's best cross-country sprinter, and Kristen Santos-Griswold, who should medal in every short-track event.
Jordan Stolz will be favored to become the first US speedskater to win all three men's sprint races since Eric Heiden in 1980. And Ilia Malinin, who'll defend his men's world figure skating title at TD Garden next month, should inherit countryman Nathan Chen's crown.
Jordan Stolz will be favored to become the first US speedskater to win all three men's sprint races since Eric Heiden in 1980.
Todd Korol/Associated Press
Mikaela Shiffrin, who had a deflating Beijing experience after being favored for at least three golds, still is
Following
The IOC, which sent out formal invitations to mark the one-year countdown, expects that nearly 3,000 athletes from more than 90 countries will attend, and 300,000 tickets were sold in the first six days.
Advertisement
Milan and Cortina may be in different regions, Lombardy and Veneto, and are nearly 250 miles apart, similar to Boston and New York. In between are narrow, twisting mountain roads and tunnels. The distance between the Alpine events in Bormio and Cortina is 150 miles.
But for many of the Games ticket-holders, this won't be terra incognita. The world long has known how to find its way to Italia in the winter.
John Powers can be reached at