Fourteenth of April two thousand and twenty-six. The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics ended a few weeks ago, the flame is out, the medals are in the athletes’ drawers. Yet the country has not yet settled the bill. Hundreds of workers still work on the roads around Cortinathe construction sites of State Road 36 Milan-Lecco are open, the Longarone variant, awaited for thirty-four years, the first agreement with Anas dates back to 1995, will not see the light before 2032. The “Eugenio Monti” bobsleigh trackbuilt by felling a kilometer of beech and larch trees amidst controversy from environmentalists, finished the races with structural damage to be repaired. Around the Pala Italia in Santa Giulia, the building designed by David Chipperfield, on the day of the inauguration of the Games the LEDs were turned off and the surrounding area was cranes, mud and piles of bricks: The redevelopment of the neighborhood is eight years behind schedule.
In this precise historical moment, and it is not a marginal detail, it is the heart of the matter, the mayors of Milan, Turin and Genoa, together with the presidents of the respective regions, met to announce that Italy wants to apply to host the 2036 Summer Olympics, or alternatively those of 2040.
Beppe Sala, mayor of Milan wrote on Instagram: «Long live the Olympic triangle». Stefano Lo Russo, mayor of Turin, said on the radio that it is “a beautiful sign of cohesion in the North-West”. Silvia Salis, former Olympic hammer throw champion who is now mayor of Genoa, assured: «We are determined, it is a great opportunity». Attilio Fontana recalled that the North-West is «one of the most dynamic engines in Europe». Alberto Cirio confirmed that «it is a path that we can follow with good opportunities». Words. For now, just words.
It is not a moral judgment, it is a technical observation. The North-West project is at the moment a technical pre-application, not a formal application. There is no dossier yet, there is no official map of the competition venues, there is no public economic framework and there is no process already open with the IOC for a designation. Sala himself admitted that the most obvious thing is missing to organize a summer Olympics: an Olympic stadium, which “isn’t there today” and which “could be the main constraint”.
The project is called “widespread games”, and it is the same philosophy that guided Milan-Cortina 2026. The idea, on paper, makes sense: hosting the Games in different places, in order to reduce the construction of new infrastructures, taking advantage of existing ones, and thus also reduce the environmental and economic impact of the event. The three cities and three regions involved, Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria, with their respective capitals, have already hosted the Winter Olympics: Turin in 2006 and Milan in February 2026, and therefore have part of the sports facilities already usable.
The IOC, moreover, is pushing in this direction. He described the recently concluded winter edition as the first truly widespread in history, pointing out that eleven out of thirteen competition venues were existing or temporary and that around 85 percent of the competition infrastructure was already available. The problem, however, is that the “widespread” Milan-Cortina model only partially worked. As Il Post has already written, «in the end expensive and environmentally contested infrastructures were built, such as the bobsled track or the Cortina cable car, which was not completed in time».
The crux of this new candidacy is exactly this: the abysmal distance between the promises and the reality of great works in Italy.
When Thomas Bach announced «And the host is… Milan-Cortina!» in June 2019, the dossier spoke of a sustainable, economically virtuous, low-impact Olympics. Then came the real bills. The main promised infrastructures turned out to be achievable only with years of delay and doubled costs compared to initial plans. Out of 98 total works, financed with around 4 billion euros, the majority, worth 3 billion, remained unfinished. Close to the start of the Games, just 16.3% of the interventions were completed and over 80% were still in progress or not in progress.
The paradox is evident: some works already under contract will be delivered years after the closing of the Games. To understand why, just look at the structural mechanism that governs large Italian public works. A public work passes through dozens of institutions before the first excavation. The systematic recourse to the “Commissioner”, in Italy the ordinary one is managed as an emergency, and an unstable Procurement Code, changed several times over the course of ten years, produce legal uncertainty, slowdowns, disputes and construction sites that start with one law and end with another.
It is not the fault of individual administrations. It is a systemic problem, ancient and unsolved. But the systemic problem does not disappear by Olympic decree. Investments for Milan-Cortina have already exceeded 3.5 billion euros, with an increase of 4.6% compared to initial forecasts. The bobsleigh track entails an estimated loss of almost 700 thousand euros per year, approximately 14 million euros to be borne by the Municipality of Cortina d’Ampezzo over the next twenty years. And that’s not all: among the 48 companies subject to disqualification measures due to infiltration by organized crimesix had expressed interest in participating in the Olympics work, and one had actually been found working on construction sites.
The Olympic triangle project has its own logic, and that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There are no official European candidacies for 2036: potential rivals include Doha or Riyadh (before the crisis in the Middle East), India with Ahmedabad, Istanbul, Budapest and Santiago de Chile, in financial difficulty. There is space to present yourself. The idea of an integrated territorial system between three large cities, with Olympic experiences already behind them, partially available infrastructure and a consolidated international vocation, is anything but far-fetched.
The candidacy also has the political merit of being bipartisan: three centre-left mayors, Sala, Lo Russo, Salis, and three centre-right regional presidents, Fontana, Cirio, Bucci, signed it together. In times of such bitter divisions, this is no small thing.
And yet there is something off about the timing of this announcement. Something that has the flavor of an emotional response rather than reasoned planning. The Milan-Cortina construction sites are still open. The legacy of those Games, which the official press release from the North-West cites as a model to be replicatedhas not yet been measured. Many strategic works, initially included in the Olympic dossier as essential, have been reclassified as “long-term legacy” due to bureaucratic delays and geological criticalities, with a horizon that moves up to 2033.
There is an Italian temptation, as old as the Romans, to use major events as a screen: to obtain funding, to speed up procedures, to galvanize public opinion. The Olympics as a justification for what cannot be done in ordinary times. But until we change the way we design, authorize and govern public works, we will continue to call legacy what, in reality, is just a delay postponed until the next event.
The real test of this candidacy will not be the press conference, nor the six-signature statement. It will be the ability to answer a very simple question, which the citizens of Cortina, Sondrio, Longarone have been doing this for years: what use are the Olympics if they never build the roads they promise?
Silvia Salis, who has won medals and breathed the Olympic atmosphere throwing a hammer, knows well the difference between the beautiful trajectory and the one that reaches the target. Even for the Games, the question is all there.
