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Tag: Winter Olympic games

  • From Milan to Cortina, a glance at the 2026 Winter Olympics venues

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    MILAN — With 100 days to go, northern Italy is gearing up to host the Milan-Cortina Olympics, the most spread-out Winter Games in history.

    The two main clusters of the Games are Milan — the beating heart of Italy’s industrial north — and Cortina d’Ampezzo, an upscale winter resort in the Dolomites mountain range. Visitors should expect a full day of travel between the two locations, which are more than 400 kilometers (250) miles apart by road.

    In addition, athletes will compete in three other mountain clusters, while the closing ceremony will be held in Verona, the largest city in the northeastern Veneto region.

    The games will mostly make use of existing infrastructure, though some venues are being renovated or built from scratch. Here’s a closer look at the venues:

    SAN SIRO STADIUM: The opening ceremony will be held in Milan’s iconic 80,000-seat San Siro stadium, home of the city’s two famous soccer teams — AC Milan and Inter Milan. It will be a last hurrah for the historic venue, which is set to be demolished and replaced by a new teams-owned stadium after the games.

    SANTAGIULIA ICE HOCKEY ARENA: The timeline is tight for the new 16,000-seat arena that will serve as the main hockey venue for the games. A test event scheduled for December had to be moved, but organisers are confident that it will be completed by the end of the year. New test events have been set for Jan. 9-11 — less than a month before the first puck is dropped at the Olympics. The multipurpose facility, which is being built by private investors, is slated to become Italy’s largest indoor arena and is a majestic sight to those arriving into the southeastern periphery of Milan.

    ICE PARK: While the ice hockey finals will be held in the Santagiulia Arena, some matches will take place in the Fiera Milano exhibition venue, which will also host the speed skating. The trade fair complex, which opened in 2005 in the northwest of Milan, will use temporary structures for the games. The so-called Ice Park will occupy four pavilions of the huge exhibition center and comprise the Speed Skating Stadium and the Rho Ice Hockey Arena, which still needs to be completed. The Speed Skating Stadium was delivered in August and the work to lay down the ice was set to start on Wednesday.

    ICE SKATING ARENA: Short-track speed skating and figure skating events will take place in the Forum di Milano, a multipurpose facility that is mainly used for basketball, ice hockey and tennis as well as live concerts. The 12,500-capacity venue in the southwestern outskirts of Milan was opened in 1990 and renovated in 2017, the year before it hosted the figure skating world championships.

    TOFANE ALPINE SKIING CENTER: Regularly referred to as the queen or the pearl of the Dolomites, Cortina hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956. The Olympia delle Tofane course will be the site of the women’s Alpine skiing next year. The iconic slope is a regular stop on the women’s World Cup circuit and also held the world championships in 2021.

    CURLING OLYMPIC STADIUM: Curling will take place in the Olympic Ice Stadium, one of the legacies of the 1956 Games, when it also hosted the opening ceremony. The arena — and Cortina in general — also served as a filming location for the 1981 James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only,” starring Roger Moore.

    CORTINA SLIDING CENTER: The century-old sliding center in Cortina has been completely rebuilt for the 2026 Games at a cost of 118 million euros ($123 million) amid staunch opposition from the International Olympic Committee. The timeframe was so tight that it necessitated a Plan B option that would have required moving bobsled, luge and skeleton events all the way to Lake Placid, New York. However, it appears the gamble has paid off with the IOC even saying recently that the venue has “surpassed expectations.” The track secured preliminary certification in March and test events are taking place through November. Completion of the roofing and all the facilities next to the track is scheduled for Nov. 5.

    The men’s Alpine skiing will take place on the fearsome Stelvio course in Bormio, a renowned fixture on the World Cup circuit. Veteran Italian skier Christof Innerhofer told The Associated Press that he can’t remember a tougher course at the Olympics in the past 30 years. The Stelvio Ski Center will also be the venue for ski mountaineering, which will be making its Olympic debut. Bormio is about 200 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Milan.

    Livigno, about an hour’s drive north of Bormio, will host the sports that are perhaps most popular among young people. Snowboarding and freestyle skiing will be held at Livigno Snow Park and Livigno Aerials and Moguls Park, with 26 medals awarded. The small town in Valtellina, near the border with Switzerland, proudly unveiled the Aerials and Moguls Park last December, boasting that it had delivered the first 2026 Olympic venue.

    Surrounded by the peaks of the Dolomites, Predazzo will be a stunning setting for the ski jumping events. Predazzo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Cortina, is the most populated municipality in Val di Fiemme, an area which has a rich history of hosting Nordic skiing world championships and World Cup races. The ski jumping facility spans an area of 3,000 square meters (32,000 square feet) and consists of two main ramps for international competitions as well as training ramps and other equipped spaces for athletes.

    Tesero, less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Predazzo, will host the cross-country skiing events. The cross-country skiing stadium was opened in 1990, the year before the area hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships for the first time.

    The biathlon competition will be held in Anterselva, nestled in the South Tyrol mountains and with 60 kilometers (40 miles) of tracks. The Anterselva Biathlon Arena has a rich history with the sport, having hosted the world championships multiple times since the 1970s. It also hosts World Cup races every year. The town itself, which is near the border with Austria, has a unique cultural heritage: more than 98% of the population speak German as their mother tongue.

    The closing ceremony will take place at the historic Verona Arena, a large Roman amphitheater built almost 2,000 years ago that is mainly used to host large-scale opera performances. It is an imposing presence in the main piazza of Verona, which is a UNESCO world heritage city. Originally built to host 30,000 spectators in ancient Roman times, it currently has a capacity of around half that for its world-famous summer festival. About 15,000 spectators will be allowed for the closing ceremony on Feb. 22.

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  • Skiing’s governing body approves gender eligibility testing policy

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    GENEVA — Skiing’s governing body approved a gene testing policy for gender eligibility in women’s events Wednesday, but delayed a decision on letting some Russian athletes try to qualify with neutral status for next year’s Winter Olympics.

    The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) said it will work with national team officials on implementing the policy, which follows the lead taken by track and field’s World Athletics.

    “The eligibility conditions laid out in the policy are grounded on the presence or absence of the so-called SRY gene, the sex-determining gene present on humans’ Y chromosome,” FIS said in a statement.

    It was not clear to what extent athletes with the SRY gene have previously competed in women’s events in FIS disciplines, which include Alpine and cross-country skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding and freestyle skiing.

    Both FIS president Johan Eliasch and World Athletics leader Sebastian Coe campaigned as candidates in the International Olympic Committee election this year promising to protect the female category.

    “This policy is the cornerstone of our commitment to protect women’s sport,” Eliasch said Wednesday in a FIS statement, “and we are convinced that there is only one fair and transparent way to do that: by relying on science and biological facts.”

    The IOC now has its first female president, two-time Olympic champion swimmer Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, who has overseen creating a working group of experts to look at gender issues in sports.

    An issue for athletes in France and Norway, which are both strong in winter sports, is that both countries have national laws prohibiting gene testing for nonmedical reasons.

    Ahead of the track and field world championships in Tokyo this month, French and Norwegian athletes were tested after arriving in Japan.

    FIS did not publish a timetable for a testing program. The Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games open Feb. 6.

    FIS barred Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competitions within days of the full military invasion of Ukraine starting in February 2022. The war began four days after the closing ceremony at the Beijing Winter Games, where Russian athletes won 32 medals, including five gold, and the Belarus team won two silvers.

    The FIS ruling council on Wednesday discussed but did not reach a decision on extending the ban or approving a neutral status policy for individual athletes ahead of the next Olympics. The council next meets Oct. 21.

    The IOC has barred Russia and Belarus from team sports at Summer Games and Winter Games. Governing bodies of Olympic sports were advised to look at giving some of the countries’ athletes neutral status — if they had not publicly supported the war, and were not linked to military and state security services.

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    AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics

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  • Paris-bound Olympians look forward to a post-COVID Games with fans in the stands

    Paris-bound Olympians look forward to a post-COVID Games with fans in the stands

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    NEW YORK — The biggest races, routines and games for many of this generation’s Olympic athletes were contested in front of mostly empty stands, largely devoid of coaches to help them out or friends and family to cheer them on.

    That was three years ago at the COVID-19 Summer Olympics and two years ago at the COVID-19 Winter Olympics. Now that they’re preparing for the Paris Olympics that begin in July — and a return to something that feels normal — the Americans heading back to the Games know they can never take for granted the screaming fans and a hug from Mom or Dad.

    “I think it’s super important to be able to share these massive moments with people you care about,” said BMX rider Alise Willoughby, who has been to the last three Olympics.

    Willoughby and about 100 other U.S. athletes are doing interviews and photo shoots this week at the Team USA media summit at a hotel in Times Square — an event that itself was made impossible in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

    One topic of conversation this week is how grateful the bikers, rowers, gymnasts and the rest are to be past the days of contact tracing, quarantines and daily swabbing or spitting for COVID-19 tests inside the so-called Olympic bubble.

    In Paris, there will be celebrations with relatives and one-on-one contact with coaches, most of whom were not allowed into the venues three years ago. The USA House — a traditional stop for athletes to wind down and kick back, especially after they’re done competing — will be doing brisk business once again.

    Mostly, athletes are looking forward to the chance to soak in the feeling from the crowd, an element sorely missing in the cavernous and largely unfilled venues in Tokyo.

    “I’ll be able to see the audience’s emotions. I want to build that with them and I can tailor my routines to that,” said American rhythmic gymnast Evita Griskenas, who plans French music to accompany one routine and “All-American” number for another, all with the goal of getting fans caught up in the moment.

    Griskenas said she already feels a different vibe. Preparing for the Olympics in Tokyo — Games that were initially delayed by a year, then held in an atmosphere nobody quite recognized — became a largely solitary, and joyless, affair.

    “It turned into training in my basement and throwing things outside,” she said.

    This year, a different experience awaits, and some athletes are even looking forward to a crowd rooting against them because, hey, at least it’s a crowd.

    “The boys have been saying, ‘We want to play France in, like, the semifinals,’” rugby player Perry Baker said. “You just visualize how big that can be, and how fun that can be. Their crowd. Our crowd. We live for those moments.”

    With crowds, naturally, come other issues that were mostly set on the sideline in 2021. On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the much-touted opening ceremony scheduled for the Seine River could be moved to the Stade de France if the security threat is deemed too high.

    Asked what she thought of that possibility, Nicole Deal, the chief of security for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said other than her main goal — athlete safety — she wants to provide the best experience for the athletes.

    “Security is an underpinning and a foundation. We’re not the main show,” Deal said.

    With two of the next five Olympics set to come to the U.S. — Los Angeles hosts in 2028 and Salt Lake City is a virtual lock for the Winter Games in 2034 — Olympic leaders know there’s a lot riding on Paris. This return to “normal,” they hope, will bring more Americans back to watching the Olympics in person, online and on TV.

    Prime-time ratings in Tokyo were 42% lower than the previous Summer Games, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and 50% below the Games before that, in London in 2012. There were a number of reasons for that — including the increasingly fragmented viewing audience, the rise of streaming services and the 13-hour time difference between New York and Japan.

    But also: COVID-19.

    “Even for those who were back home, it wasn’t the most important thing going on for us at that time,” USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland said of the renewed possibilities presented by the first COVID-19-free Games since 2018. “This is about an opportunity to really focus on this incredible thing called ‘Olympic and Paralympic sport.’ It brings us together almost like nothing else.”

    The way things went in Tokyo took some of the luster away from what was nearly a perfect experience for indoor volleyball player Jordyn Poulter. Yes, she won a gold medal in her first Olympics, three years ago. Yes, it was a once-in-a-lifetime type of triumph. Still, there was something missing.

    “Not being able to relish in that moment with friends and family in that immediate time — it’s something that I’m looking forward to in this next one,” she said.

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    AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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  • JOC, Sapporo announce decision to abandon bid for 2030 winter games, seek possible bid from 2034 on

    JOC, Sapporo announce decision to abandon bid for 2030 winter games, seek possible bid from 2034 on

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    TOKYO — Officials from Sapporo and the Japanese Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced a decision to withdraw the northern Japanese city as a candidate to host the 2030 Winter Olympics, with the effort soiled by massive corruption and bid-rigging tied to the one-year delayed Tokyo Games.

    Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto and JOC President Yasuhiro Yamashita, at a joint news conference in Tokyo, said they are withdrawing because of the lack of support from the citizens whose trust was largely lost because of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic corruption cases that erupted last year.

    “We could not gain understanding from the citizens,” Akimoto told reporters. “There has been a widespread sense of uneasiness among the citizens about the criminal cases related to the 2020 Tokyo Games, and they are also worried about their financial burden for hosting the games.”

    Yamashita, a judo gold medalist and International Olympic Committee member, said he suggested the change of plan because he was afraid that “our pursuit of the bidding process may irreparably damage the value of the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games and sport.”

    Prior to the announcement, the two officials met in Tokyo to finalize their decision. It comes just as Stockholm, Sweden, is now seen as the favorite for 2030 and Salt Lake City almost certain to be picked for 2034 by the International Olympic Committee.

    The two officials said they will continue to seek Sapporo’s possible candidacy for 2034 or later, but chances are considered slim and their talk for 2034 is seen as an attempt to save face.

    Akimoto said bidding for 2034 would be also “quite severe” and that the city would have to closely examine the prospects, including the will of the residents, before deciding how to proceed with future bids.

    The widespread scandal has tarnished the Olympic image in Japan and dented Sapporo’s bid.

    At its center is a former executive at powerful advertising company Dentsu who joined the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee in 2014. Haruyuki Takahashi, who used great influence in arranging sponsorships for the games, says he is innocent and his trial has yet to begin.

    Fifteen people at five companies face trial in the bribery scandal. Among them are Aoki Holdings, a clothing company that provided uniforms for Japan’s Olympic team; Sun Arrow, which made the mascots; and Japanese publishing house Kadokawa, whose executive was found guilty on Tuesday of bribing Takahashi.

    Japan officially spent about $13 billon to hold the 2020 Games, though a government audit has suggested the true amount might be twice that much.

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    AP videojournalist Ayaka McGill contributed to this report.

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    AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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  • Malagò: 2026 Olympics on track after difficult few years

    Malagò: 2026 Olympics on track after difficult few years

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    MILAN — Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malagò is confident everything is on track for the country’s first Olympics in two decades but admits that the past few years have been akin to “running a marathon with a backpack.”

    Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo will stage the 2026 Winter Games and the country’s preparations have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic as well as political upheaval.

    But Malagò hailed a productive first in-person meeting with the International Olympic Committee’s Coordination Commission for the Games, which spent three days in Milan.

    “In the past three years since we won the Games, I have met with four governments, four different institutions and structures, four people with whom to deal with … without forgetting COVID, inflation and the international crisis,” Malagò said at a news conference on Wednesday.

    “It was like running a marathon with a backpack. Now I am happy because the appointment of Andrea Varnier finally shows that the government is on board … we all know very well what are the difficulties and the problems, but I think most of these will be resolved soon.”

    Varnier was named chief executive of the Milan Cortina 2026 organizing committee last month, ending a considerable period of limbo as his predecessor, Vincenzo Novari, left several months ago.

    The 59-year-old Varnier, who has also been an adviser to the IOC, was managing director of image and events for Turin 2006 — the last time Italy held the Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

    “Andrea Varnier is the light at the end of the tunnel,” Malagò added. “His collaboration as adviser to the IOC and more than 30 years of experience in the industry are the key to accelerating our roadmap. His appointment represented a fundamental step.”

    During the three days in Milan, the Commission visited a number of venues across the city, including San Siro, which is slated to hold the opening ceremony.

    However, there are question marks over what the stadium will look like in three years with AC Milan and Inter Milan — the two teams which play their soccer home games there — keen to build a stadium of their own, most likely either on the site of the existing arena or nearby.

    “There doesn’t seem to be another venue in Italy that can hold 80,000 spectators, it’s not just a question of spectacle but also revenue,” Malagò said. “But as we’ve said from the beginning it’s not something that concerns us, even if we are obviously very interested spectators.

    “Anything is fine for us. It’s fine if the current San Siro remains, although certain things need to be fixed … we’re also open to a new San Siro, although we don’t know if it would be ready in time, it’s not up to us to say, we trust the city management.”

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    More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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