Construction of the 2026 Winter Olympics ice hockey venue is going right down to the wire, with the organisers admitting there is no back-up plan if the arena is not ready on time.
Work on the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — the new, 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan — is running behind schedule, but there is no alternative stadium that could be called in at the last minute.
A planned test event had to be moved and new test events aren't scheduled until 9-11 January, just a month before the start of the Games.
“There is no plan B,” Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for Milan-Cortina, told the Associated Press on Saturday.
“So necessarily we have to be able to organize the competition in an impeccable manner at Santagiulia.”
The first scheduled Olympic hockey game at the arena is a women's preliminary round match on 5 February, one day before the opening ceremony.
Usually, new Olympic venues are tested at least the year before hosting medal events. It’s not just the ice which needs testing to make sure the playing surface is suitable and safe; everything else in a brand-new arena, such as concession stands and bathrooms, also needs to be checked.
Francisi admitted there is “no precise date” for the venue to be handed over to local organizers, but he is confident “for the moment” that it will be ready for the Olympics.
“There are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day,” Francisi said. “The companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.
“We're monitoring all that daily together with them, there's great collaboration between us, we're creating a coordinated plan between their work and our preparations and for the moment we're healthily optimistic, but 100% we'll do it.”
The men's Olympic hockey tournament is scheduled from 11-22 February, with the women’s tournament running from 5-19 February.
AP
