By ANDREW DAMPF, Associated Press
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — In Sochi, workers were still hammering away in the media village and shower water ran yellow when journalists from around the world arrived for the 2014 Winter Games.
The chaotic preparations for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro were labeled the “worst” ever by a vice president of the International Olympic Committee.
The next Olympics, though, might set an unofficial record for running late on preparations.
That’s because the century-old sliding center being completely rebuilt for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games is pushing the deadline so tight that the IOC has gone so far as to demand a Plan B option that would require moving bobsled, luge and skeleton events all the way to Lake Placid, New York, if the track in Italy isn’t finished in time.
Thursday marks exactly one year to go before the Feb. 6, 2026 opening ceremony at the San Siro stadium and the track in Cortina is still a half-completed construction site.
The IOC has set a deadline for the end of next month for pre-certification of the Cortina track and nobody is saying for sure if it will pass the test.
But Fabio Saldini, the Italian government commissioner in charge of the 118 million euro ($123 million) project, told The Associated Press during a recent visit that almost 70% of the track was completed — even if it was tough to tell inside the muddy and chaotic construction site.
With 180 people working from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day to build the sliding center, the first ice is slated to be laid down on the track at the start of March.
“We have huge support from the construction firms, the government and (Infrastructure and Transport Minister Matteo) Salvini,” Saldini said. “With everyone’s support, we will be able to finish in time.”
Construction began less than a year ago and no sliding track has been built in such a short timeframe. An official test event is slated for October, a step that has taken on more importance since the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training crash hours before the start of the opening ceremony for the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Lake Placid was chosen because it came with no cost
The IOC would have preferred to use an active track in nearby Austria or Switzerland instead of rebuilding the Cortina venue, which had been closed since 2008. But it let the local organizing committee select the Plan B option.
“We chose Lake Placid because it was the only place where they offered us the track without requiring us to make any investments,” Milan-Cortina CEO Andrea Varnier told AP. “But we’re counting on holding the sliding sports here in Cortina.”
Added organizing committee president Giovanni Malagò about the Lake Placid backup plan: “It’s just a formality. There’s no substance to it.”
Environmental groups have protested over climate damage due to the Cortina track’s reconstruction.
“There were 800 trees cut down,” Saldini said. “But they were not all 100 years old, like some people said. And we’re going to plant 10,000 trees when we’re done.”
Moving from glitzy Cortina to Lake Placid would be quite a change
General ticket sales for the games are about to start following a pre-registration process that drew in more than 350,000 requests — 70% of them from abroad from more than 210 countries.
Sliding is one of the Games’ most inexpensive attractions with luge events going for as low as 40 euros ($42) and bobsled for a maximum of 100 euros ($104).
But what happens for ticket holders if the sliding track in Cortina isn’t ready and events are moved to Lake Placid?
“It will be a whole different experience,” said Paul Caine, the president of hospitality package provider On Location, about the prospect of moving from glitzy Cortina to upstate New York.
Caine noted that while “nobody wanted to go to Tahiti” for surfing events in French Polynesia during last year’s Paris Games, hospitality packages were sold for the sailing competitions in Marseille, which is located in southern France — 3 ½ hours by train from Paris.
On Location has received requests for hospitality packages from 62 countries so far, with ice hockey, biathlon and figure skating the most popular sports.
Private boxes for the opening ceremony at the iconic San Siro soccer stadium have already sold out.
Bormio, Anterselva and Val di Fiemme have a long history of hosting winter sports
These are the first Games to fully embrace cost-cutting reforms installed by IOC President Thomas Bach and use mostly existing venues — which has meant scattering the Games all over northern Italy.
Alpine skiing will be divided between Cortina (for the women’s events) and Bormio (for the men) — which are separated by a 5 ½-hour drive. Livigno will host freestyle skiing and snowboarding, biathlon will be in Anterselva, Nordic events will be in Val di Fiemme and ice sports in Milan.
“It’s very complicated due to the big distances and also because of all the different representatives in each region,” Varnier said. “We have great relationships with everyone but everybody has their own way and style of doing things, so we need to adapt to them. That’s the spirit of these Games: We adapt to the different territories and not vice versa.”
One reason that the organizing committee is adapting to each and every venue is that most of these places have a long history of hosting World Cup races and world championships.
For example, Bormio hosted the Alpine skiing worlds in 1985 and 2005; Cortina hosted the skiing worlds in 2021 and has been the site of more than 100 World Cup ski races; Anterselva has hosted six biathlon worlds dating back to 1975; Val di Fiemme has hosted three Nordic worlds.
Still, none of that does any good for an athlete like Ester Ledecka, the Czech wonder who claimed golds in both Alpine skiing and snowboarding at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. In 2026, two of Ledecka’s races will be held on the same day in resorts hours apart — meaning she’ll likely have to choose one over the other.