IOC Wraps Up Inspection Visit of 2026 Olympic Winter Games Progress
Sliding venues, ice hockey among topics covered by Coordination Commission
Posted On: February 23, 2024 By :The International Olympic Committee has finished a series of visits to check in on the progress of the local organizing committee for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in the Veneto region of Italy, including the much-debated site for sliding events and other venues that are still under construction.
Organizers of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games last month approved spending $89 million on rebuilding an old track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, continuing their long dispute with the International Olympic Committee as the IOC insists on having events held elsewhere. Opened in 1923 and used for the 1956 Olympic Winter Games in Cortina, the Eugenio Monti Sliding Centre track has been closed since 2008 because of rising maintenance costs and then dismantled last summer to make way for a new facility.
The IOC said in early January it expected sliding events to be held outside of Italy to save money spent on a venue it feels would not be in line with its newfound emphasis on financial savings. Bids have come in to host sliding events in 2026 from Austria, Switzerland and — somewhat surprisingly — the United States. The New York State Olympic Regional Developmental Authority had proposed bobsled, luge and skeleton be held in Lake Placid as a solution to the long-running drama in Italy.
“We have expressed a wish. And in the end, the reality is that today there is a construction site which is in Cortina,” Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi said in Venice on Friday, at the end of a three-day visit.
Dubi said the track has to be ready by March 2025 in order to guarantee the safety of the athletes and “on this we can’t compromise. It is coming from the international federations. So we have to go by their experience and their expertise no matter what, these are the conditions they have established.”
The venue tour in Cortina also included the location where a temporary Olympic Village will be built. Construction progress was inspected at Livigno Snow Park, Predazzo and Cortina Villages and Palaitalia Santa Giulia, which will host ice hockey — which, for the first time since 2014, will include NHL players. “All these projects are facing very challenging timelines and cannot be delayed,” said the IOC report.
The Milan-Cortina Games will have a majority of venues that are existing or temporary and the IOC Coordination Commission inspected Olympia delle Tofane, which will host women’s Alpine skiing, as well as Para skiing and snowboarding, and the Cortina Olympic Stadium, a venue from the 1956 Games where the Olympic curling and Paralympic wheelchair curling competitions will take place in 2026.
“As we return to the Italian Alps, in this case the stunning Dolomites, 20 years after Turin 2006, the connection with some of winter sports’ most iconic venues and one of the world’s most renowned cultural hubs, in Milan, will provide an ideal canvas for spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games,” said IOC Coordination Commission Chair Kristin Kloster.
The Coordination Commission was joined for at least part of the trip by the presidents and secretaries general of all the International Winter Sports Federations and several representatives from National Olympic Committees. The Olympic Winter Games will be February 6–22, 2026, with the Paralympic Winter Games from March 6–15.
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