(Rome) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) reiterated on Friday its concern about the construction on time of a track in Cortina wanted by the Italian government to host the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events for the 2026 Milan Olympics Cortina.
Asked during a press conference at the end of a three-day visit by the IOC Coordination Commission on the progress of preparations, Christophe Dubi, executive director of the Games, did not hold back: “ Yes, it’s complicated. Deadlines are very tight. On this we are very clear.”
He recalled that the “pre-approval” of the site had to be validated by “March 2025 to guarantee the safety of athletes”, while the project was only launched this week, creating a controversy in Italy. , because it required the felling of hundreds of trees.
According to the IOC, no bobsleigh track has ever been built “in such a short time”.
The president of the coordination commission for the 2026 Olympics, the Norwegian Kristin Kloster, also expressed her doubts, recalling that the IOC had “not recommended the construction of new structures”, because this project is expensive (82 million ‘euros) and is of little interest to the local population and even to the sports concerned.
“We are monitoring the deadlines while knowing that there is very little time between now and March 2025 to deliver such a structure,” she said. “This is why the organizing committee decided to take measures for a plan B”, namely the use of already existing installations abroad, she recalled.
“We did not recommend the construction of new facilities,” she recalled. “The Italian authorities wanted it […] We respect this decision.”
The series of twists and turns around this installation has seriously damaged the image of the 2026 Olympics and the organizers.
In October, they announced that, due to a lack of track in Italy, they were going to move the events out of the country, something never seen before in the history of the Winter Olympics.
But eager to avoid what it considered to be a snub when it put “Made in Italy” at the center of its action, the ultraconservative government of Giorgia Meloni had relaunched the idea of building a track to Cortina, as initially planned when the Italian application was accepted in June 2019.