70 years after first hosting Olympics, Cortina's mountain beauty resurrects spirit of Games

Chris Jones reports from Italy ahead of the Milano Cortina Olympics.

On the wending way into Cortina, there is a reminder of Winter Olympics past: the ski jump from 1956 sits dormant, the ramp in place, its landing area converted into a soccer field. The site is oddly beautiful, filled with the good kind of ghosts. It’s warming to think about the simpler joys that took place here.

Then, Cortina hosted the entire games. Only 32 countries participated. Figure skating was held outside for the last time, the mountains looking on. Television was expanding its influence, but the Olympics remained an in-person experience first.

The 2026 Winter Olympics, co-hosted by Cortina, Milan, and several other sites across northern Italy, have proved far more difficult to engineer, a made-for-TV event built to a global scale.

In Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, a clock is counting down to the start of the Olympics. It feels like everyone is racing it rather than wishing for it to reach zero. Construction delays at the Milano Santagiulia hockey arena have dominated the conversation when locals have thought to talk about the Olympics at all.

In stunning Cortina — where curling, the sliding sports, and women’s Alpine will be held — there is the same kind of last-minute frenzy. The sound of construction echoes through the trees, and there are worries, as there have been winter after winter, that its famed slopes haven’t received enough snow.

But on the town’s cobbled streets, the preparations feel more joyful, more present, more likely to end happily than they do in Milan. There are pretty banners strung up everywhere, tied to balconies and festooning woodpiles, commemorating 1956, celebrating 2026.

If in Milan you need to close your eyes to