It’s going to be messy, with athletes and competitions spread across Northern Italy, requiring four separate venues for the opening ceremonies.
The main hockey arena might be ready, and it might not. At a test event in January, a month before the start of the competition, there was a hole in the ice. Some of the mountain housing might be getting final coats of paint as the athletes arrive as well.
And yet, there’s a better-than-average chance that this 25th edition of the Winter Games is just what the International Olympic Committee (IOC) needs after a dozen years of chaos, out-of-control budgets, geopolitics, a pandemic and climate change wreaking havoc with the Winter Olympics.
This is what happened in Paris two years ago. The previous decade included the organizational mayhem of Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the drudgery of Tokyo in 2020, a joyless experience that unfolded in empty venues of a city that had no interest in staging the event as Japan and the rest of the world tried to emerge from the scourge of COVID-19.
Then, the spectacle in Paris seduced the world once more as only the Olympic Games and the City of Light could, as events unfolded beneath an Eiffel Tower that went twinkle-twinkle every night. The result was record attendance, with nearly 10 million tickets sold. Record viewership, both on television and streaming, including a massive recovery in the United States, the largest source of media and sponsorship dollars for the IOC, with NBC averaging 30.4 million viewers a day, an 80 percent increase over Tokyo.
Now comes Milan-Cortina, the next step in the IOC’s efforts to return events to its heartland — in this case, the Dolomites of the Italian Alps, with their breathtaking limestone cliffs. The views, the Italian spirit, and the promise of stands with actual spectators delivering human energy once again have organizers and the other Olympic media partners frothing at the mouth.
“We’re gonna celebrate the athletes the way they have done in Paris,” Christophe Dubi, executive director of the Olympic Games for the IOC, said in an interview in December. “And that is what will make for a true Olympic experience back to the roots.”
Milan’s famous Duomo will be part of the scenery at next month’s Olympics. The Games will be staged in several different areas across Northern Italy. (Stefano Rellandini / AFP via Getty Images)
The athletes and the competitions are just part of the secret sauce of a modern Olympics that organizers hope Milan-Cortina has the ingredients for. In Paris, they discovered — or perhaps rediscovered — how important the energy in the host city (or cities) is for keeping everyone buzzing before and after a competition ends.
“You were going through Paris, and you had plenty of cultural activities,” Dubi said. “In the end, this is back to the roots in winter and what we want.”
Real snow will also help, after two Games with entirely man-made flakes. The last two iterations of the Winter Games sent them to places where they had never taken place before and in countries that have only the most limited winter sports culture. COVID kept fans away in Beijing in 2022, and the stands were often half-empty at best in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018.
Both Games were near disasters for the Western media partners who make up much of the gravy train for the IOC. NBC sends the IOC $1.3 billion per Games for the U.S. media rights and hardly got its money’s worth in Beijing.
The network averaged about 11 million viewers, a sharp decline from the 19.8 million average for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. And the Pyeongchang Games were down from Sochi, Russia, in 2014 by 1.5 million viewers.
Sochi started off strong, but finished down significantly from 2010 in Vancouver, the last truly successful Winter Games. Four days after the Olympics ended, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. Two years after Sochi, Grigory Rodchenkov, the leader of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, revealed how Russia had cheated its way to top the medal table after a disastrous showing in Vancouver.
Russia has been an Olympic pariah nation ever since. The Winter Games, and the Olympics themselves, have been trying to recover.
With strict COVID restrictions in place in China, the 2022 Beijing Games unfolded in sparsely attended venues without fans. (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)
Paris represented huge progress. The numbers were absurd, not only for the media but on the ground. Nearly 300,000 people attended the daily pep rallies at the Champions Park across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. More than 1 million people attended track and field, a record for the sport. Another million attended basketball games. Some 450,000 attended beach volleyball. On July 30, nearly 750,000 spectators attended Paris 2024 events.
Milan-Cortina offers another opportunity, even if the ice sports in Milan won’t be able to showcase the city the way Paris 2024 did.
“We’re going to iconic winter sports locations that fans know well,” Adrian Varnier, the chief executive of the Milan-Cortina Organizing Committee stated in an interview with the IOC at the end of the Paris Games. “(Men’s) Alpine skiing will take place in Bormio, a renowned spot for this sport. Nordic skiing will be in Val di Fiemme, which has hosted numerous World Championships and World Cups. Biathlon will be in Anterselva, considered one of the sacred sites of biathlon. By going to these places, we’ll not only find improved infrastructure but also a tremendous passion, interest, and love for these sports that will resonate with enthusiasts worldwide.”
Winter sports, though, are always a tougher sell. First, it’s cold. Second, the sports are more niche. Fewer than half of the world’s countries participate in the Winter Games. As of December, about half the tickets remained unsold. The planet is getting warmer, and achieving sustainability is increasingly difficult. This is likely only going to get harder.
That hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of Olympic supporters, partners and athletes on the American side of the Atlantic, who are already counting the days until a second Salt Lake City Olympics in 2034.
“It always starts with the setting, and we’re returning home to kind of like the cradle of the Winter Olympics in Western Europe and the stunning Italian Dolomites,” said Molly Solomon, the executive producer of NBC’s Olympics operation. “We’ve also got the best crop of stories, American stories that we could have ever dreamed up. So we’ve gotten pretty good building blocks.”
Indeed, this may be the best team the U.S. has sent to the Games. Alysa Liu and Ilia Malinin are the reigning world champions in figure skating. Lindsey Vonn has come out of retirement and is suddenly the best downhill skier in the world. Jessie Diggins, in her final season, is still a medal threat in cross-country skiing.
Mikaela Shiffrin is a huge star and the winningest Alpine skier in history. She’s also on a redemption mission after crashing three times in Beijing. The hockey tournament is filled with NHL stars. The women’s tournament will undoubtedly come down to the epic U.S.-Canada rivalry. Jordan Stolz may be the best U.S. long-track speed skater since Eric Heiden.
“We’re feeling as bullish as ever about the winter team we will bring with us,” Sarah Hirshland, chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee said at a media summit in New York in October.
“Our athletes are comfortable in Italy. They compete there often. Many of them train there,” she said. “Italy is a place we know we can shine.”
Shiffrin and Vonn have both said Cortina is among their favorite stops on the World Cup. Diggins just won her third Tour de Ski, the multi-stage race that always ends in Val di Fiemme, where the cross-country races will take place.
“Oh my God, we’re talking about one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Diggins said in an interview last fall.
Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, said the corporate world has responded. Major sponsorship deals for Milan-Cortina and the next Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028 were sluggish until the summer of 2024. Then Paris happened, and the momentum took off. NBC has now sold out its Olympic commercial inventory.
“A major cultural capital of the world is hosting,” Zenkel said. “And now the door’s open and we get to, to roam the streets of Milan and tell that story.”
Unifying four separate opening ceremonies in the cities of Milan, Predazzo, Livigno, and Cortina d’Ampezzo will take some technical wizardry. But if Paris could open the Games on the Seine, Milan-Cortina should be able to pull this off.
And no matter where you are, the food should be pretty good, too.
“The story of Milan-Cortina is the best of winter sports and the athletes in the most stunning setting, and I would add with a true local flavor,” Dubi said. “If you go to Bormio, it will not be the same plate of pasta as you have the day before in Livigno.”
