Italy final hosted the Winter Olympics 20 years in the past, when occasions had been held in Turin, and the legacy of the video games can nonetheless be seen.
Ilkka Herola of Staff Finland competes within the Ski Leaping Competitors within the 2026 Winter Olympics (Picture: Getty Photos) This text incorporates affiliate hyperlinks, we are going to obtain a fee on any gross sales we generate from it. Be taught extra
The 2026 Winter Olympic Video games is getting into its ultimate week, with one of the best athletes from world wide converging on northern Italy. To date Norway is main the desk on the Milano Cortina video games, with 28 medals, whereas Staff GB is presently at twelfth, out of 26, having scooped three medals – all gold. It could possibly be heading in the right direction to beat its all-time report set in Sochi in 2014, when British athletes got here residence with 5 medals, with hopes nonetheless alive in each the lads’s and ladies’s curling, the ladies’s ski massive air, and the ladies’s ski halfpipe.
However what occurs to all of the world-class services internet hosting the video games as soon as the athletes have gone? Italy final hosted the Winter Olympics 20 years in the past, when occasions had been held in Turin, and the legacy of the video games can nonetheless be seen.
A gaggle of city explorers have revealed how venues constructed for the 2006 video games have been left to rot, simply 20 years after tens of millions of Euros was spent to construct them. The group, often known as Damaged Window Concept, visited two websites, an ice monitor for bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton, and a ski bounce venue, and had been shocked by what they discovered.
Opening the video, the host stated: “Proper now Italy is internet hosting the world once more for the 2026 Winter Olympics, and whereas these video games need to construct one thing that lasts, we went in search of what the legacy can actually imply as soon as the athletes are gone and the cameras have moved on. As a result of final time a few of Italy’s Olympic venues had been merely deserted.”
He added: “When the brand new venues rise, the outdated ones stay as scars on the panorama, too costly to take care of and too expensive to erase.”
The video exhibits the group visiting an ice monitor in Cesana Torinese, which is in remarkably good situation, regardless of having been left untouched for 15 years. Olympic flags and cameras are nonetheless in place, in addition to a cupboard the place the Olympic torch as soon as stood.
“For 2 weeks again in 2006, the world’s finest athletes rocketed down this 1.4km lengthy course,” he says. “Twenty years later the location sits dormant, winding down the southern Alps like a scar via the forest. It was constructed for 7,000 spectators, however for years now it has been empty.”
Based on the video’s host, the venue was used for some coaching occasions and competitions following the 2006 video games, however the refrigeration system was shut down in 2011, and it has stood empty ever since.
The crew additionally go to a ski bounce venue in Pragelato, which exhibits extra indicators of age, together with overgrown weeds, vandalism, and graffiti. “This web site was meant to dwell on as a nationwide coaching hub, created to form the following era of Italian ski jumpers,” the host says. “However, with area for as much as 9,000 followers to observe the spectacle, it was constructed for a future that by no means got here.”
Closing the video, he says: “With the Winter video games again in Italy, the guarantees of a legacy have returned once more. However after seeing what will get left behind, that phrase can generally develop into an excuse for venues too specialised to reuse and too costly to maintain alive.
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“And whereas the occasion can create actual long-term advantages for native communities, what we witnessed at this time is not sustainability – it is a invoice that lasts for many years. And if nothing adjustments, ‘legacy’ can simply develop into the well mannered identify for the mess left behind when the lights exit.”
Based on the 2026 sport’s organisers, 85 per cent of venues used are pre-existing, or have been constructed briefly and might be dismantled after occasions come to an finish. In the meantime, the Olympic Village in Milan might be remodeled into pupil housing, and the occasion is getting used to enhance transport and infrastructure in Northern Italy.
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