TOthe Milanese continues to seem this one is a bit strange Winter Olympics in the city, without mountains, without snow, without skisbut we start next week.
The 10,001 torchbearers will have crossed the country in 60 stages, the Olympic Torch will burn in the brazier, construction sites are closing, subway stops will reveal working escalators and new elevatorsthe Central station will also be unpacked.
Events, places, exhibitions will open for all the expected spectators, we will complain about the trafficlike every time the city mobilizes, but who knows, it might surprise us like a new Expo, when we have started to believe in our ability to know how to do and do well.
Danda Santini, director of “iO Donna” (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Sport will be celebrated, which brings clean faces and positive values, girls and boys, open challenges and sacrificestraining and sense of duty. All for a handful of fractions of a second between one gate and another in the slalom, for a steadier flight on the skaters’ legs, for stubborn muscular tenacity in endurance tests.
Here we are then, with our special dedicated to the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics. Where you will find everything you need to know so as not to appear unprepared, to distinguish a curling match (team sport on ice similar to bowls) from a skeleton competition (sledging with skates where the athlete is on his stomach and head forward, help!), an acrobatic skiing session (technically freestyle) from a biathlon event (cross-country plus shooting).
We are ready to kick off the Winter Olympics (illustration by Cinzia Zenocchini).
To have something to bet on, a review of the new female faces to focus onfrom which beautiful surprises can only come. Plus, the places to visit, the mountain events, the alpine style, the trendy high-tech clothingto.
Without forgetting how much the history of sport is intertwined with ours: the Winter Olympics have only been open to women since 1956ten years after the vote. They were 14 out of a total of 69 athletes (only 17 percent), few, but elegant in their slim suits.
Manuela Angeli, then 16 years old, called up for figure skating, says: “In that era it was normal to have few women, we were used to it. But when we walked around the town in uniform they asked us for our autograph.” Behind the scenes, only 17 percent women worked: translators, speakers, journalists, interpreters, students, the first generation of a rapidly modernizing country.
Today the Olympics are perfectly balanced: there is no discussion about the number of women compared to men, neither on the pitch nor in international sporting bodies. There will be 3,500 Olympic and Paralympic athletes from 93 countries, 47 percent of whom are women. Only the Nordic Combined (distance jump) will not include women’s competitions; For the first time, women will compete in the same distances as men in cross-country skiing.
Small national pride: it was the Italian skier Giuliana Minuzzo Chenal, the first woman in the history of the Games to read the Olympic oath in Cortina during the first edition open to women in 1956.
This year too there will be a strong female presence at the reading of the oath during the inauguration on 6 February. A few words, to underline the spirit of sport, respect for the rules and fair play. It’s nice that they were also valid off the pitch today.
