100 Days to Milano Cortina 2026
Today is October 29, 2025, and we are officially 100 days out from the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics! From February 6th through the 22nd, the world’s best in all things on ice or snow will converge on northern Italy.
And so, after a slightly aborted effort during the 2024 Paris Games (if only my 9-to-5 and college schedules didn’t have to converge during the best parts!), Olympic Meddling is back in full force for 2026! For those two weeks in February, you can expect daily updates right in your inbox on all the news, results, and stories to know out of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. If you know someone you think would be into that, feel free to send them my way!
Here at Olympic Meddling, we are big fans of the Winter Games. After all, I started what would eventually become this newsletter with daily text updates to my friends during the 2018 Winter Olympics. And as much as I love gymnastics and swimming and track (and canoe slalom!), my favorite events to watch happen at the Winter Games.
As my excitement (and hopefully yours) builds over the next 100 days, there’s stuff to pay attention to even now. Here are a few stories to keep an eye on as we get closer to the Opening Ceremony.
Venue controversies
Olympic Games are expensive and they need a lot of space, which is why, as it always seems to be, there’s some scuttlebutt about a few of Italy’s Olympic venues.
For a while, the big one was the sliding sports center, home to events like bobsled, luge, and skeleton. Italy spent a lot of time waffling on which venue they wanted to use, initally talking about refurbishing an old track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, then entertaining an offer from Austria to host sliding events at Innsbruck, then offering to refurbish the dormant 2006 Torino Olympics sliding track. Finally, in January 2024, the organizers decided that they were going to demolish the old Cortina track and build a nice shiny new one in its place.
There was a lot of concern that the new facility wouldn’t be ready in time for the games, so much so that the organizers had a back-up location in mind: Mount van Hoevenburg in Lake Placid, NY, about 3,960 miles (~6,372 km) away from Cortina. As late as one year before the Games, it was looking like they might need Plan B. In February 2025, government officials alleged sabotage had disrupted construction on the new Cortina sliding center. Regardless of any nefarious actors involved, the new facility held its first tests in March 2025. As unpopular as the project is, it seems like the track will be ready for athletes come next February.
But there’s another facility that’s looking even less prepared than the sliding sports center. The city of Milan is building a brand-new 16,000-seat arena with the intention of using it for marquee ice hockey games. However, construction on the arena has been repeatedly delayed, with organizers admitting the facility won’t be finished until just before the Opening Ceremony. With all they delays, an event that was meant to test the ice prior to the Games in December 2025 was moved to a different venue. It’s possible that no athletes will have played a game at this new arena before the preliminary rounds of the women’s hockey tournament begin on February 5.
The quality of the ice matters for things like injury risk and the way the puck moves. But more than that, an untested arena means untested seating, bathrooms, concessions, security, and everything else that goes into a large sporting event.
And ice hockey is a big deal. The sport is popular around the world and it’s the main team sport competition at the Winter Games. Plus, for the first time since 2014, professional hockey players from the NHL will be joining their national teams at the Olympics, putting additional eyes on the men’s tournament. According to ESPN, tickets for the men’s hockey gold medal game, which will be held at the new arena, are selling for up to 1,400 euros, or over $1,600. The only things more expensive are the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
The organizers promise that although it will be close, the new hockey venue will be ready when the Games begin. For everyone’s sake, I hope they’re right.
Slidey sports
Yes, my dumb little monikers for different genres of events are returning.
Also returning? Flavor Flav! The rapper popped up at the 2024 Paris Games as the official hype man for the U.S. women’s water polo team. Now, he’s bringing the energy (and the oversized clocks) to U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton- he even took a turn on the track with a skeleton sled!
Personally, I think skeleton is the scariest of slidey sports, and not just for the Halloween-esque name. Hurtling down an ice chute with your face centimeters from the ground is harrowing!
However, on the goofier side of slidey sports, you have doubles luge. If you have never heard of doubles luge, I assure you, whatever you’re thinking of, the reality is even sillier. Exhibit A.
Yes, it is literally a person lying on top of a person lying on top of a sled hurtling down the ice chute.
Silliness, Exhibit B: The reigning Olympic gold medallists in men’s doubles luge are a pair of Germans. Both of them are named Tobias.
After some cursory research, I have found no concrete evidence about how this discipline came to be, but I am very curious. My best guess is that it somehow comes from two people on a toboggan, where one would sit in front of the other, and eventually it mutated into sitting on top of, rather than in front of, your buddy? If you have more insight, please inform me.
Anyway, the main reason I bring up doubles luge is that traditionally, this has been a male-only event, because the international governing bodies thought only dudes deserve to go sledding while stacked like pancakes, I guess. However, that’s changing for 2026! Milano Cortina will be the first Winter Games to include women’s doubles luge in the competition slate. Good luck to all the competitors as they remember to point their toes and hope the person on top doesn’t have to fart.
Things on skis
(The name is TBD. Not everything can be as good as “fighty sports.”)
Another cool gender-equality thing coming to the 2026 Olympics comes from the world of cross-country skiing. For the first time, men and women will compete in the same distances: 10 km interval start, 20 km skiathlon, 50 km mass start, and 4 x 7.5 km relay. In the past, women only skied shorter distances, with the longest topping out at 30 km.
In the same vein (on the same slope?), in ski jumping, women will finally be competing on the large hill. While ski jumping has been in the Olympics since 1924, women have only been competing in it since 2014 (!!) and only on the normal hill (aka the shorter of the two hills, 85-109 m tall). Now, starting in Italy, women finally get to launch themselves off the large hill (100-149 m). Don’t look down!
Less good for women? The International Ski & Snowboard Federation (FIS) is requiring all athletes participating in the women’s category at FIS-sanctioned events (which includes all Olympic qualifiers and the Games themselves) to undergo invasive and expensive gender testing. Way to be a party pooper, FIS.
New events!
Okay, back to the good news. There’s a whole new sport making its Olympic debut in Italy. While Paris gave us breaking, Milano Cortina is introducing ski mountaineering!
The discipline, known as “skimo” for short, involves athletes racing up and down an established trail over challenging alpine terrain. It’s like a combo of hiking, cross-country skiing, and downhill skiing, so I think you have to be just a little crazy (and probably Scandinavian) to do well. There will be three skimo events at the 2026 Games: men’s sprint, women’s sprint, and mixed team relay.
Mascots
The last two Olympic mascots have been weird and iconic in their own ways. Beijing 2022 had Bing Dwen Dwen, a delightfully clumsy panda. Paris 2024 had the Phryges, chaotic hat creatures that did everything from tormenting fans to delivering javelins. Milano Cortina 2026 has Milo and Tina (get it, MILanO and CorTINA), “brother-sister stoats” who seem very cute in official art. TBD if it transfers to plushies and suit mascots
What’s next?
Many Winter Olympic sports have qualifying events, pre-Olympic tournaments, and regular season competitions happening over the next few months in sports like hockey, figure skating, and skiing. I, for one, will be watching the NHL and PWHL hockey as always, and paying just a little more attention to ISU Grand Prix and FIS World Cup results in figure skating and skiing, respectively.
Depending on how impatient I get, or if there’s anything else extra-interesting that happens between now and February, I might do some more pre-Olympics updates. Maybe even some event previews for my favorite sports? Let me know if there’s anything particular you’d like to see!
Either way, start prepping your pasta and polenta, because the Olympics will be in Italy before you know it. Ciao!
We thought the sliding center was going to be the big venue controversy (we called it the sliding-novella) but it turns out the hockey arena is the problem child. It is nowhere near done. The problem seems to be that it is a private developer building the arena rather than the organizing committee. The OCOG took over the sliding center and made sure it happened. The hockey arena has fallen prey to all the bad things of Italian construction. We will let you know how it looks when we get there!
Bentornato Olympic meddling!