the bobsleigh track planned outside Italy, slippery ground for Giorgia Meloni – Libération

Two years before the Winter Games, Italy is still looking for the track which will host the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh events. To the point of thinking about a solution abroad, to the great displeasure of the nationalist aims of his government.

This is the area of ​​contention: on which site will the lugers, skeletonists and other Olympic bobsledders compete during the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics? Two years before the winter Olympic meeting, the question arises more than ever in Italy. It shakes up transalpine sport and even beyond, up to the top of the State. Because time passes, and the possibility of seeing these events relocated abroad – this would be a first for the Winter Olympics – appears more and more plausible. The prospect of a snub frightens the Italian authorities, who carry their nationalism over their shoulders.

On Tuesday, December 5, the flammable issue was at the heart of a crucial meeting at the Chigi Palace in Rome, the seat of the Council presidency. Around the table: the steering committee for the 2026 Olympics, composed among others of the Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, the Minister of the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, and the Minister of Sports, Andrea Abodi. He had to sift through the few options. This Wednesday, a board of directors of the Milan-Cortina 2026 organizing committee must in turn look into this controversial case, which comes back like a boomerang on the noses of the organizers.

With every bid for the Winter Games or almost, the question of the place likely to host these three disciplines, which represent 12 of the 116 Olympic titles, is often one of the most thorny, given its cost and its low interest in the eyes of local populations.

Meloni gets involved

However, the process seemed recorded in the initial version of the presentation file designed by the Italian Olympic Committee (Cuneo). The organizers planned to build a replica in Cortina, on the remains of the Eugenio-Monti track used in 1956 for the first winter Olympics organized in La Botte. An expensive operation (the budget was estimated at 100 million euros) and not without consequences for the environment. The idea ended up fizzled out after much delay, due to a lack of candidates to take charge of the work, surely cooled by the vigorous discussions between pro and anti-tracks, where environmental protection associations were at the forefront.

On October 16, the president of the Italian Olympic Committee and the organizing committee for the 2026 Olympic Games, Giovanni Malagò, announced during the session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Mumbai that, due to the lack of a calibrated track for the event available, these events will certainly take place outside the country. “In such a delicate phase for our economy, it is unthinkable that the government would initiate new spending on a bob track,” the Italian Minister of Sports explained to the Turin daily La Stampa.

A heartbreak for many Italians, starting with the far-right President of the Council, Giorgia Meloni. A few days after this announcement, his government put back on the table, guided by the sacrosanct “made in Italy”, another option: the Cesana track, built especially for the 2006 Olympics in Turin, which however requires several renovation works. refurbished to comply with the standards of the IOC specifications. “The Cesana case has been reopened by the Italian government. In the eyes of the IOC, only existing and usable sites must be considered at this stage,” recalled the executive director of the Games, Christophe Dubi.

A track closed only six years after its inauguration

“We were told that we would have to make ourselves available,” confirms the mayor of the Piedmontese village of 900 inhabitants, Roberto Vaglio. Because these Olympic Games are Italian Olympic Games and it would be a bit strange to have to delegate them abroad, spending money abroad, when we have the possibility, with a very limited cost, to postpone in service this structure.”

A project to renovate this site, closed just six years after its inauguration in 2006, was therefore hastily outlined. According to this document, it is possible to revive this 1,435 meter long route with 19 turns, which had cost 110 million euros two decades earlier. Including the reconstruction of the refrigeration installations, dismantled because they used ammonia to make ice – a technology that is not very green and has since been abandoned – the cost could be around 30 million euros.

La Simico, the company responsible for delivering the Olympic infrastructure (the equivalent of Solideo for Paris 2024), therefore presented its feasibility study for the renovation of Cesana to the steering committee on Tuesday.

Events in Switzerland or the United States?

If this option were to be rejected, the organizing committee for the 2026 Olympic Games has already contacted several track managers, notably in Austria (Innsbruck) and Switzerland (Saint-Moritz). The mayor of Innsbruck had already offered to host these sliding events in his city in August, with a budget of between 12 and 15 million euros. “I can understand the injury to national pride that this would represent for the Italians, but when we saw that the tender for the construction of the Cortina 2026 bobsleigh track had remained without a candidate, we decided to make our track available,” declared the mayor.

France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes reports that the La Plagne track, built for the 1992 Albertville Olympics and still to this day the only approved French facility, was not contacted directly by the organization of the 2026 Games. prevents us from informing them of the possible availability of our track during informal discussions,” explains the director of the La Plagne track, Bruno Thomas, to the regional branch of France TV. The Italian team would also have inquired in the United States. “All options abroad are being studied,” assures a source with knowledge of the matter. It becomes a commercial negotiation, the question of cost could be decisive.

And if the Cesana track, 600 kilometers from Cortina and 200 kilometers from Milan, were finally chosen, the Winter Olympics would then become the most geographically “split” in history. The deadline for “defining the way forward” is set in agreement with the IOC for January.