Olympic Games-2026: green light for the bobsleigh track, the IOC sees red

The green light announced in the morning by the Italian Ministers of Transport and Sports changed to orange in the evening, or even light red after the clarification by the International Olympic Committee.

Matteo Salvini and Andrea Abodi, however, believed they had put an end to the soap opera that has been plaguing the organizers of the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan Cortina for months.

“The bob, skeleton and luge track for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics and Paralympic Games will be in the municipality of Cortina,” they announced in a joint press release. “This choice, they added, puts a final point (on the file) and shows the extreme determination of this government to conclude all the work with a view to the Games as best as possible and in Italy.”

But, unsurprisingly, the announcement of the Italian government which has regained control since December on an issue which has become highly political and symbolic, caused the International Olympic Committee (IOC), opposed from the start to an expensive project (82 million euros) and of little interest to the local population and even to the sports concerned.

Thirteen months for a complex project

The Olympic body, based in Lausanne, told AFP through a spokesperson "of its great concern about the delivery (of the track) so that the deadline of March 2025 is respected, so that it can be validated and approved.

“No (bobsleigh) track has ever been built in such a short time,” notes the IOC.

In fact, there are thirteen months left for the Italian construction group Pizzarotti, which, as the only candidate, won the call for tenders, to build a track measuring 1.445 meters long on land with an average slope of 8,5% and which has 16 turns, as well as specific refrigeration equipment.

The IOC's concern is shared by the two international federations concerned, that of luge and that of bobsleigh/skeleton.

“This is why the IOC asked the organizing committee to work on a plan B, in the event of delays so that the events can take place,” he said.

Contacted by AFP, the organizing committee for the 2026 Olympics did not wish to comment and referred to its press release published Tuesday at the end of its board meeting.

The organizers then expressed their "optimism", while specifying that they continued to work on a plan B, namely the relocation to a track already in working order abroad, in neighboring Switzerland or Austria in particular, as desired by the IOC.

“We need an electric shock”

This series of twists and turns has seriously damaged the image of the 2026 Olympics and the organizers.

Last October, they announced that, due to a lack of track in Italy, they were going to move the events out of the country, something never seen before in the history of the Winter Olympics.

But eager to avoid what it considered to be a snub when it put "Made in Italy" at the center of its action, the ultra-conservative government of Giorgia Meloni had relaunched the idea of ​​building a track in Cortina, as initially planned when the Italian candidacy was accepted in June 2019.

Almost two years before the deadline (February 6-22, 2026), it is not only the bobsleigh track that poses a problem, according to the Minister of the Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti.

Shortly after the announcement by his two government colleagues, he made a somewhat alarmist speech. "I am beginning to regret having contributed to bringing the Winter Olympics (to Italy), because it is a great responsibility and I see that there are great difficulties" in carrying out the work, a- he declared according to comments reported by the Italian press.

"There are only two years left and what have we done? (...) The time to do infrastructure work is terribly short and becoming almost impossible to meet. We must find a way not to miss this historic occasion, we need an electric shock,” he warned.