Spread-out Winter Olympics in Italy comes with ‘complexities,’ IOC president says

When athletes from around the world arrive in Italy for the Winter Olympics in the next week or so, they’ll be scattered throughout the country’s north.

Six Olympic villages make up Milano Cortina 2026, from the city of Milan all the way to the Antholz Valley.

Planning a large-scale event over such an expansive stretch of the country has come with challenges, including for International Olympic Committee (IOC) staff, who’ve been told to limit trips between clusters to minimize their environmental impact.

“I think initially we all thought, we’ll just have it be a little bit more dispersed because that’s more sustainable,” IOC president Kirsty Coventry said on Wednesday, ahead of her trip to Italy next week. “Yes, that is very true. But it has added additional complexities in the delivery of the Games.”

While Coventry said that she believes it was the right decision to spread out the Games’ footprint in Italy by using mostly pre-existing venues, it’s a model the IOC plans to review after the Olympics.

“We’ve got to find the balance between sustainability and making decisions for sustainable reasons, and the balance of experience for fans, for [National Olympic Committees], for athletes,” she said.

That includes trying to measure the cost of spreading out the Games’ footprint, and looking at what it would cost if some disciplines were dropped from the Olympic programme.

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An Olympic programme working group that Coventry created when she took office last year is already tasked with reviewing the disciplines that are part of the Olympic Games. It’s examining whether some disciplines should be removed or added, and will consider whether