Today, the 6th of February, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games open, with Italy set to host the world’s largest sports event, writes the BBC.
This year’s Winter Olympic Games will feature more than 2,900 athletes from 90 countries over the next 16 days. The games will take place in several locations in northern Italy.
The excitement began on the 4th of February, but the official opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games will take place on the 6th of February at the legendary San Siro football stadium in Milan, which has been specially adapted for the event. It is expected that prominent stars will participate in the opening ceremony, including Mariah Carey and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Given the large distances between the venues, not all athletes will attend the opening event in Milan. The second ceremony, which will also include the lighting of the Olympic torch, will take place in Cortina, with events planned in Predazzo and Livigno.
For the first time since the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, a new sport has been included in the competition program – ski mountaineering. During the discipline, athletes will first climb the mountain on skis equipped with special anti-slip pads, then take them off, put the skis on their backs and continue the journey on foot. Once at the required point on the mountain, the athletes will put on their skis again and go down to the finish line.
A series of competitions involving mixed men’s and women’s teams have also been added to the program.
Milan and Cortina were selected as the venues for the games in 2019, and although existing infrastructure is largely used, new buildings have also been built – for the hockey and skating disciplines. A year earlier, the Cortina bobsleigh track, built at a cost of more than 80 million euros on almost a hundred-year-old foundation, was unfinished and looked like a race against time. This competition was won, and the first races took place in November, the same cannot be said for the Milan hockey hall. On the 1st of February, the organizers said that the hall would not be completely finished by the first games, but it was absolutely certain that matches could be held there. The main problem is the size of the ice rink – it is slightly shorter than required by NHL standards, and there are concerns about more frequent collisions between players. Doubts have also been raised about the quality of the ice.
As for athletes from Russia and Belarus, they will participate in the games under a neutral flag, and only if they meet the requirements of strict rules. Among them is the condition that the athletes have not supported the hostilities in Ukraine and are not associated with the Russian army. A total of 20 athletes from Russia and Belarus will compete in eight sports at the Milan-Cortina Games. However, information available to the BBC Sports News indicates that four of the 13 Russian athletes allowed to participate are linked to active support for Russian aggression. The International Olympic Committee did not comment on the cases of individual athletes, only stating that it had checked the athletes based on established principles.
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