The XXV Winter Olympic Games are about to open their doors. The opening celebrations will be held on February 6th at the public San Siro Stadium (recently sold for the sole purpose of demolition), and the closing celebrations will be held fourteen days later at the Verona Arena, with tickets available starting at EUR950 per person. If the spring of the Olympic bid was characterized by the mirage of the most sustainable and zero-cost Games ever, and its summer by a less than democratic and transparent governance system, it's been since last fall that we've been reconnecting the threads of the story to understand the scope of this mega-event. The third report of the Open Olympics campaign, published in December, offers a candid snapshot of the current state of play.
The autumn of the Olympic bid was marked by mounting delays, postponing the opening of some roadworks to the fall of 2033, and other essential works related to the competition venues to the end of 2027. The Milano Cortina Foundation estimates the cost of the Games at EUR1.7 billion. To this figure must be added EUR3.5 billion in works carried out by Simico SpA and, in the Lombardy Region alone, another EUR3.8 billion in works outside the scope of the main contracting authority (and in many cases implementing body) appointed by the government. To this sum should be added individual initiatives promoted in other provinces, by municipalities, by RFI, and at least five by ANAS. The total figure? Currently, a credible and informed estimate is not available, a fact that in itself casts doubt on any assumptions regarding the potential economic and tourism benefits of the investment. We know a little more about the Simico perimeter alone (the aforementioned EUR3.5 billion): for starters, we know of over EUR150 million in extra costs in the last 300 days of 2025. But, even more significantly, we know that two-thirds of the projects are non-essential to the event, that 28 of them are still in the planning phase, and that these non-essential projects account for 87% of the total expenditure. This isn't just mismanagement. Despite the commissioner-led governance and the "agile" management of environmental and strategic impact assessments, the combination of haste and delay is a clear demonstration that the Olympics are intended as the appropriate catalyst for inaugurating infrastructure projects, not as the event that made their timely completion essential.
Meanwhile, the costs of the Paralympics have increased by 359%, and the Sports Decree has removed EUR43 million from the Fund for Victims of Mafia and Usury, while the Single Fund for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities has been cut by over 50%. There is no estimate of the overall land consumption, the CO2 footprint of individual projects, or the costs and tender identification codes (CIG) of subcontracts. At least two public access requests relating to the extra costs of the Games have been denied, and the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court (TAR) has condemned the City of Milan for one of the two denials.
We could continue like this, delving into every single facet of the complex geometry of this great event, risking not finding adequate and respectful words to denounce the fact that two workers lost their lives on these very construction sites.
On February 6, 7, and 8, Milan will once again host Utopiadi: a three-day event of radical criticism of these Games, promoted by the Unsustainable Olympics Committee and the city's social movements. A three-day event to restore prominence to disputes over housing, popular sports, and the gentle traversal of the mountain environment, amidst the collective hangover from yet another major event with which Milan and Cortina are positioning themselves as global tourist destinations, despite their much-vaunted accessibility and inclusion, but also at the expense of fragile ecosystems and union rights. While work will be the focus on Friday and grassroots sports will emerge on Sunday, Saturday, February 7th will feature, among other initiatives, a large popular march in opposition to the environmental and financial harms of the Olympic model, which both metropolitan and inland areas (which have directly witnessed the drain on resources to fuel the event and the cement mixer) are working tirelessly to address. Also noteworthy is a documentary film entitled The Great Game, which is significantly contributing to the counter-information buzz and the creation of an imagery irreducible to the ideas of competition, excellence, and chauvinism that have always characterized this type of event.
Utopiadi also means continuing the long tradition of alternatives to the state Olympics, a tradition that began in the 1920s and whose most significant moment, not only from a militant perspective, was the Catalan Olympics of 1936. The Proletarian Excursionists Association is convening a session dedicated to the highlands, with particular reference to the Valtellina area and the story of the 500 larches felled to build a new, costly, and useless bobsleigh track to replace the historic Cortina track, the lifeless Cesana Torinese facility, and Innsbruck's offer to host the competitions 150 kilometers away from the offending slope.
The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will end with the new spring, but their legacy (what proponents call a legacy) will be far more enduring and, more than any other numerical or episodic reference, shed light on the current stakes. Everything briefly illustrated in this update constitutes a predatory territorial governance mechanism, capturing attention and resources for universal public policies only to sacrifice them on the altar of attractiveness, internationalization, and the production of exclusive and memorable experiences. These are undesirable horizons, completely incompatible with the climate crisis and the widening social divide between those with money and power and those who aspire to confirm the rent of a home that events like the Olympics, in a deregulated context, aim to inflate with complete disregard for the social consequences. The future of the city and the country, inspired by these uninhibited initiatives, is being played out on this, not on the temporal and spatial scope of the Games, not on the medal table.
For more information, see Altreconomia's investigations, cio2026.org, and ape-alveare.it.
Alberto (abo) Di Monte
bibliotecaria.noblogs.org
https://umanitanova.org/olimpiadi-invernali-limportante-e-speculare/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #2-26 - Winter Olympics: The Important Thing Is Mirroring (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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