MILAN — Speed skating for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics might be moved to the 2006 Turin Olympic oval or a temporary facility elsewhere after the IOC rejected plans to build an expensive roof over the outdoor track at Baselga di Piné.
Costs for the roof were initially slated at $54 million, according to a project announced in November. But there were concerns that actual costs could rise by at least 50%.
“The IOC said the investment was underestimated and not sustainable for the area and the IOC reserves the right to point the way in terms of executing the Games,” said Giovanni Malagò, president of both the 2026 organizing committee and the Italian Olympic Committee.
“I defended the original masterplan but there comes a time when you can no longer defend the undefendable,” Malagò added. “Everything that has happened since then, from COVID to the war (in Ukraine), has gone against us. Baselga is not a victim but rather one of the issues that arise systematically during the organization of an international event like the Olympics.”
While officials in the Trentino region are still hoping to rebuild the Baselga track, Malagò said Friday during a visit to the oval that he’s hoping Trentino and Lombardy can bid to host the Youth Winter Olympics for 2028.
Building a roof over the Baselga track was part of the plan when Milan-Cortina was awarded the Games in 2019 but not included in the official budget in an era of increasing sensitivity about the cost of staging the Olympics.
There have been calls from the start of Italy’s 2026 bid to hold speed skating at the existing indoor oval built for the 2006 Turin Games. The last Olympics to hold speed skating outdoors, where weather can affect ice conditions and therefore results, was the 1992 Albertville Games.
“It’s not automatic,” Malagò said about the possible move to Turin. “We will discuss all of the different possibilities.”
Outdoor ice is notoriously tough to keep in shape for all competitors to have a fair chance at a medal.
High temperatures made matters challenging in Albertville, where one recurring term was “slush,” with skaters ploughing through soft ice that sometimes had a thin sheet of water on top.
Over longer distances, when a competition session can take two hours, conditions at outdoor tracks can change to the extent that gold can depend as much on the starting time as on four years of preparation.
Ice-making facilities were removed from the Turin oval and it would cost an estimated $16 million to reinstall the system.
Besides Turin, other possibilities might include building a temporary track inside a convention center in the Lombardy or the Veneto regions that contain Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, respectively.
Italy’s initial bid declaration in March 2018 was for a joint Milan-Turin candidate. Cortina was added within a week to make it a three-pronged bid. By September 2018, Turin dropped out after political infighting, when a senior Italian official declared the bid “dead.”
But the bid pressed on as Milan-Cortina and beat a Swedish bid in the 2019 host election.
Turin is 85 miles southwest of Milan, which is 200 miles southwest of Cortina.
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NBC Sports and Peacock combine to air live coverage of the 2022-23 Alpine skiing season, including races on the World Cup.
Coverage began with the traditional season-opening stop in Soelden, Austria.
The first of four stops in the U.S. — the most in 26 years — was Thanksgiving weekend with a women’s giant slalom and slalom in Killington, Vermont. The men’s tour visited Beaver Creek, Colorado the following week, with stops in Palisades Tahoe, California, and Aspen, Colorado after February’s worlds in Courchevel and Meribel, France.
NBC Sports platforms air all four U.S. stops in the Alpine World Cup season, plus four more World Cups in other ski and snowboard disciplines. All Alpine World Cups in Austria stream live on Peacock.
Mikaela Shiffrin, who last year won her fourth World Cup overall title, is the headliner. Shiffrin, who began the season with 74 career World Cup race victories, is now up to 84, passing Lindsey Vonn for the female record and now two behind Ingemar Stenmark‘s overall record.
On the men’s side, 25-year-old Swiss Marco Odermatt returns after becoming the youngest man to win the overall, the biggest annual prize in ski racing, since Marcel Hirscher won the second of his record eight in a row in 2013.
2022-23 Alpine Skiing World Cup Broadcast Schedule
Schedule will be added to as the season progresses. All NBC Sports TV coverage also streams live on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.
*Delayed broadcast.
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A day after breaking her tie with Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin won again, moving two victories shy of the overall Alpine skiing World Cup record.
Shiffrin swept a pair of giant slaloms in Kronplatz, Italy, the last two days to give her 84 World Cup wins, taking Wednesday’s race by 82 hundredths of a second over Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel combining times from two runs.
“After yesterday, I was just so tired,” Shiffrin, who said she was awake at midnight, 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. after Tuesday’s milestone, told Austrian broadcaster ORF. “I felt nervous because I was tired. When I’m skiing tired, then I make mistakes. … In the first run, I thought I’m either going to go out of the course in the fourth gate, or it’s going to be a really good run. It ended up being a really good run.”
Swede Ingemar Stenmark won 86 times in the 1970s and ’80s.
Paula Moltzan was seventh on Wednesday and Nina O’Brien 10th. It’s the first time three U.S. women made the top 10 of a World Cup race in five years.
Three Americans made the top 10 of a World Cup technical race (giant slalom or slalom) for the first time since Dec. 3, 2005 (Bode Miller, Daron Rahlves, Erik Schlopy). From January 2017 to October 2020, Shiffrin was the only U.S. women to finish in the top 10 of any traditional World Cup slalom or giant slalom.
ALPINE SKIING: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule
What a run @MikaelaShiffrin charged again in @Kronplatz for a back to back victory 🤯#fisalpine pic.twitter.com/JRm70uhNHP
— FIS Alpine (@fisalpine) January 25, 2023
Shiffrin can tie Stenmark as early as Sunday with two slaloms this weekend in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic, site of Shiffrin’s first World Cup start at age 15 in 2011.
“Technically, it is possible,” she said. “I’m going out for some training tomorrow, and then going to try to get a really good, efficient, recovery day, and then we’ll see if I can put the energy on my slalom skis for two more races.
“It’s busy, and I’m kind of at an unfortunate time of my monthly cycle,” she continued with a smile and a laugh. “So I’m, like, more tired right now. So just normalize talking about that.”
After that, the record pursuit pauses for the world championships in France. World championships races do not count as World Cups.
Shiffrin has 10 wins in 21 starts this season, her most successful campaign since her record 17-victory season in 2018-19.
Her 19 career World Cup giant slalom wins are second in women’s history, one behind retired Swiss Vreni Schneider. Shiffrin’s 51 World Cup slalom wins are the most for any Alpine skier in any discipline.
“Between the second race in Kranjska Gora [two weeks ago] and these two races yesterday and today, it’s the best GS skiing I ever did,” she said, according to the International Ski Federation.
LAYDEN: Shiffrin’s numbers tell us a story we should already know
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