Organizers are already trying to put the pieces together. The Organizing Committee for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games has decided to have the 11-year-old child, at the heart of a controversy following his expulsion from a bus, participate in the opening ceremony.
Last week, Riccardo’s case moved all of Italy. In possession of an ordinary ticket for 2.5 euros and a non-Olympic ticket for 10 euros, he was expelled from a bus on line 30 between Calalzo and Cortina, site of many Olympic Games events.
Next to Mariah Carey?
Left without a solution or means to contact his loved ones, the young boy traveled 6 km on foot in the cold to find his home, before his family filed a complaint for child abandonment. The story therefore ends well for Riccardo, invited by the organizers this Friday to the San Siro stadium.
“He will play a symbolic role during the opening ceremony,” a spokesperson for the Milan Cortina 2026 Games told AFP. In an event already calibrated from A to Z for several months, his role remains “still to be defined”, among prestigious guests like Mariah Carey or Snoop Dogg.
The 11-year-old also received an apology from the bus driver, who was temporarily suspended by the company in charge of public transport in the area. “It hurts my heart, now looking back, I realize I made a mistake. I ask for forgiveness from the boy and his family,” Salvatore Russotto, 61, was quoted as saying by Italian media.
On the political side, the opposition quickly seized on the subject to denounce “the failure of the management of public transport with a view to the Olympic Games”, according to the regional councilor of the Democratic Party Alessandro Del Bianco. “What happened is unacceptable,” lamented MP Elisabetta Piccolotti. Not only is it inhumane, but it is also dangerous, policies related to the Olympics cannot in any way compromise people’s safety. »
