As long as it was open, the old “Eugenio Monti” bobsled track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, built for the 1956 Winter Olympics, was regarded as one of the most dangerous on the international scene of the entire sport. It has now been seventeen years since it was last used, back in January 2008. Bobsledding is not one of the most popular and widely practiced sports in our country; in fact, it has only 59 registered members throughout Italy. 

The rain and frost have now completely transformed the facility, the wood of the protections has been worn away, and lampposts and barriers have rusted. The slope has come back into the limelight in recent years because it is being restored to host the events of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics, despite several delays since the announcement of Italy’s assignment of the five-circle event, controversies related to the environmental impact of the work and its subsequent use. The main problem has to do with the high costs initially programmed, an expenditure of 47 million was planned, which then slowly began to rise. First to 61 million in 2021, 85 million in 2022 and with the latest decree of the Meloni government to 128 million in total, five of which have already been spent on consultancy and demolition [1].

However, the problem of rising costs is common for most Olympic venues scattered across the Italian Alps. The ski jump arena in Predazzo (TN), for example, had a budgeted cost of just under 24 million euros, which has now risen to nearly 43 million. The Trentino municipality will also host one of the Olympic villages, and again this has risen from an initial budgeted expenditure of 27.6 million to the current 42 [2]. The important thing to note is that these additional funds are often put in by municipal, provincial, or regional governments.

The old track in Cortina has already been removed and organizers are racing against time to complete the work. To make way for the new facility, several trees, equivalent to those that fell over 12 years under power saws in the municipality of Cortina d’Ampezzo [3], have been already cut down. The disconcerting figure, which justifies concerns about the environmental damage done to the Ronco forest on the slopes of the Tofane mountains, emerges from clarifications provided by the company that was responsible for cutting after the controversy caused by the cutting down of 100-year-old larches [3]. The Central Commission for the Protection of the Mountain Environment (CCTAM) of the Italian Alpine Club has expressed a very strong position on the matter.

The CCTAM’s view is expressed in the following words, “The real damage of the current intervention is given by the change of use of the area which, from forest with prevalent values of protection of the inhabited area, is transformed into a semi-built area. All ecosystem services related to the forest type present in the last centuries are therefore lost” [3]. The larch cutting was also the subject of a complaint filed with the biodiversity unit of the Belluno Carabinieri [3]. The hypothesis outlined in the complaint concerns the “crime of destruction of scenic property and environmental damage”, the cutting disrupts previous forest planning by confirming that safeguarding the forested area is not a priority [4].

As a result, the removal of the forest is likely to be more extensive than estimated. At the same time, the subsequent planting of 6,000 trees does not really appear to be compensatory since neither where it will be done nor the ultimate goal of this activity is specified [4].

Fig. 1: The Mountain chain standing behind Cortina d’Ampezzo. Photo by  Martinophuc on Pixabay.

The completed facility must be delivered by March 15, 2025, in just under two months. Then, testing and any modifications must follow. From Feb. 6, 2026, onward, they should host the Olympic competitions. You cannot find any mention of the future operating costs and who will bear them: municipality, region, or CONI. Similarly, there is no mention of the fact that an extra budget will be needed for set-ups not foreseen in the project [1]. 

The resounding news that came out in December 2024 is that if the track cannot be completed, the events will be held in Lake Placid in the United States [5]. Because of the delays in completing the work, the International Olympic Committee, which had made it known several times that it was opposed to resurfacing the Cortina track and that it was not convinced that the timetable would be met, asked the organizers to indicate a Plan B anyway: Lake Placid, that is. The U.S. facility has already hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980 and will host the World Skeleton Championships next year, so it is already ready; those who run it also would make it available free of charge for Milan-Cortina, writes the Wall Street Journal [5].

One solution that had already been proposed since the allocation of the games, and which would, among other things, have kept the games on Italian soil, was to expand the host cities to three, including Turin, which hosted the Olympics in 2006. The bobsled track in Cesana Torinese (TO), as said by Marina Menardi (president of the Cortina Civic Committee association), “Could be fixed and reopened with an investment of ten million euros, the same that is needed here just to demolish the old track” [6]. As a matter of territorial pride, and also since without the bobsled and luge races in Cortina there would be few disciplines left to host, it was nevertheless decided to opt for building a new facility practically from scratch.

Menardi continues, “At the time [of the 2006 Olympics] Cortina proposed to host the bobsled races, but the organizing committee of the Turin Olympics decided to build a new and expensive facility as a matter of pride. After the Olympics it continued to lose money and closed. We are making the same mistake” [6]. Indeed, one of the main issues, mentioned earlier, is the future management of the facility after the Olympics, which is expected to cost the insane amount of 1.4 million euros a year. The organizing committee and CONI (Italian National Olympic Committee) have drawn up a list of alternative activities for which the track could be used; the number of bobsledders in Italy is only 59 athletes, which would not even remotely guarantee that the facility would break even. Many of these proposals, however, are the same as those already heard after the 2006 games. The mayor of the municipality of Cesana Torinese Daniele Mazzoleni regarding these claims recently stated, “It is copy-paste of the tall tales they had told us […] to us the Coni said that Cesana would be ‘the Coverciano of skiing’ guaranteeing us that it would take over the management. Two years and bye-bye” [7]. 

Italy is thus approaching the Olympic appointment by collecting figures and merciless criticism both nationally and internationally. If only two years ago the suggestions of environmental associations and Cortina residents had at least been taken into consideration, perhaps several problems would be solved today.

In the context of a renewed desire for a “return to the mountains”, publicized even through events of great impact such as the Olympics, there is a need to assess how such interventions affect Alpine territories. Favorable and unfavorable changes, resulting from such initiatives, are always related to having direct influences on both the population and the environment.

This article is part of the project “Quiz Ambientali per un Trentino Più Verde!” carried out by Econtrovertia APS and sponsored by Fondazione Cassa Rurale di Trento (Notice of Approval of December 20, 2024).

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