Some time after the end of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games, we ask ourselves what their legacy will be in terms of infrastructure and the environment.
Cover image: The new Cortina bobsleigh track. Photo by Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images.
It’s now been months since the celebrations at the Arena of Verona brought the curtain down on the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games. And despite the quieter staging of the Paralympics, the Sanremo Music Festival first and international politics afterwards seem to have definitively erased the legacy that the Games have left behind. Yet the mark they have made runs too deep to disappear, and it is bound to resurface with interest especially in the mountain areas that are already the most vulnerable.
Light and shadows beneath the olympic flame
It’s true: like every Olympic Games worthy of the name, this has also gave our Country a timeless spectacle. Our athletes delivered extraordinary performances, capturing the attention of an entire nation for disciplines that normally struggle to reach a wide audience.
Sixteen days of competitions, celebrations, and shared excitement managed to keep not only winter sports enthusiasts glued to their screens, but also viewers discovering these disciplines for the very first time. Throughout the games, Italian athletes achieved some record-breaking results: 14 bronze medals, 6 silver medals and 10 gold medals, a remarkable performance that placed our country fourth in the overall medal table.
But not everything that glitters is gold, nor silver or bronze.
While the now former director of Rai Sport, Paolo Petrecca, resigned following his disastrous commentary during the opening ceremony – among his many blunders were confusing Matilda De Angelis with Mariah Carey, talking over fellow commentators, omitting references to several artistic performances, and failing to acknowledge the world championship titles of volleyball stars Anna Danesi and Simone Giannelli – his mistakes unfortunately represent only the tip of the iceberg of a much deeper series of problems left behind by these Games.
Opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Photo of Roman Koksarov
A legacy to build or to heal?
The undoubtedly spectacular television shots of the Cadore slopes did everything they could to conceal a parallel reality that was nevertheless impossible to ignore. The construction work related to the Milan Cortina Olympic venues became a genuine race against time, with projects accelerated in the final months, costs soaring far beyond initial estimates, and emergency-style management that fuelled the impression of an organisational machine chasing deadlines rather than respecting them.
When the Olympics officially began, the number of projects still under construction was far from negligible: building sites remained open, finishing works were ongoing, and several surrounding areas had yet to be completed.
Among them, some sparked far greater controversy than others. This was the case of Milan’s ice arena, described by sections of the international press as an embarrassment because of delays and unfinished details. Then there was the Apollonio–Socrepes cable car, criticised for being built across land considered unstable and prone to landslides; it was not completed in time and was never used during the Games. And, of course, there was the infamous Cortina bobsleigh track which, although operational for the competitions, will only be fully completed in the coming months, while carrying the burden of the approximately 800 centuries-old larch trees felled to make room for construction in the Ronco forest.
These examples, beyond last-minute deliveries or partial inaugurations, represent tangible proof that this was far from a temporary event. Massive and costly infrastructures risk becoming genuine white elephants: legacies destined to be abandoned or, at best, underused, while permanently compromising an ecosystem that is already fragile and heavily exploited.
The picture becomes even more complex when considering that, out of the 98 projects included in the Olympic plan, only 31 were strictly necessary for the staging of the Games. The remaining 67 were intended to form the so-called “legacy“: permanent infrastructures meant to improve the quality of life for the territories involved.
An ambitious promise that must now confront the challenge of maintaining and managing infrastructures built under the pressure of Olympic deadlines—and at enormous cost. Total expenditure ultimately reached around €7 billion, including roughly €2 billion allocated to organising the event and more than €5 billion invested in sporting venues and transport infrastructure, many of whose final costs increased dramatically compared to the estimates presented in 2019.
Of the original promise of “cost-free Games,” with sustainability at their core, very little now seems to remain.
A show for the few
If most of these projects (the so-called legacy) are supposed to represent a positive inheritance capable of benefiting local communities for years to come, how many will actually have a positive impact? And above all, how many were truly necessary?
We are talking about regions such as Lombardy and Veneto, which in recent years have faced criticism over shortcomings in healthcare, education and essential public services, priorities arguably far more pressing than the construction of new sports facilities or transport infrastructure.
A look at previous Olympic Games suggests that many of these interventions may have been neither useful nor necessary. In Cortina, the remnants of the 1956 Winter Olympics are still visible today, from disused chairlifts to abandoned sporting facilities such as the historic Eugenio Monti bobsleigh track and the Italia Olympic Ski Jump. In Sestriere, meanwhile, the Olympic Village built for the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics was recently put up for auction after years of neglect and deterioration.
In this sense, the promise of long-term development collides with a more fundamental question: were the Olympics a response to the real needs of these territories, or a top-down decision justified by the exceptional nature of the event, and by the potential profits it could generate for private interests?
One of the first aspects worth reflecting on is the price of tickets for the competitions, so expensive that they effectively excluded many of the very people most directly affected by the event. Live sport thus became a privilege reserved for those wealthy enough to afford it, distancing the Games from the communities that hosted them. Many residents of Cortina complained that they had not been consulted during the decision-making process and expressed disappointment that the event had failed to become an opportunity to genuinely improve quality of life in the area.
Considering that most of the expenditure was covered through public funding from the Italian State and regional governments, while the immediate benefits were largely concentrated among sponsors, major corporations and tourism operators, a clear asymmetry emerges between those who spent only a couple of weeks in these places and those who actually live there, and who will have to live with the consequences and the legacy left behind.
Without winter there’s no Olympic Games
By their very nature, the Winter Olympics are unlike any other sporting event. Winter sports require specific places, resources and environmental conditions that, while providing a magnificent setting for competition, are also exposed to risks that these fragile mountain environments are often unable to withstand.
It is therefore no coincidence that, alongside the destruction of entire habitats to build infrastructure that in some cases already existed just a few kilometres away, much of the striking white snow seen on television was in fact artificial. To guarantee suitable competition conditions, new water reservoirs were built and water extraction intensified, removing quantities of water up to five times higher than ordinary legal limits, with significant consequences for ecological balance, from stress on fish populations to the deterioration of water quality itself.
Greenpeace installation protesting against Olympic sponsors.
It is estimated that these Olympics, considering construction, the event itself and spectator travel, generated approximately 930,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. A figure that is already alarming in itself, yet does not include the additional 1.3 million tonnes generated through sponsorship agreements with highly polluting companies such as Eni, Stellantis and ITA Airways. According to available estimates, these emissions could contribute in the coming years to the loss of around 5.5 square kilometres of snow cover and more than 34 million tonnes of glacial ice. Winter sports are therefore being promoted through events that simultaneously contribute to the destruction of the fragile environments on which they depend.
If the original promise was to organise sustainable, “cost-free” Olympic Games, the reality experienced on the ground tells a story that stands in stark contrast to the official narrative. However successful these Olympics may be portrayed as a sporting triumph, the other side of the Olympic medal reminds us that every victory comes at a cost, and that, all too often, it is the local communities and ecosystems that remain long after the Olympic flame has gone out who are left to pay the price.
Standing on the side of sport today means, first and foremost, standing up for the climate, the places and the people that make sport possible. Because there can be no spectacle without the territory that hosts it, and there can be no winter sports without winter.