USOPC Preparing for Far-Flung 2026 Winter Olympics

As the days count down on 2024 and with just over a year to go until the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Italy, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee is working on a series of logistical plans for one of the more far-flung Games in recent history.

The Games will be spread among venues in Milan and Cortina, which are approximately 250 miles apart. USOPC Chief Executive Officer Sarah Hirshland admitted “these will be operationally a very complex Games” with the distances between venues.

“You have to build the infrastructure to support Team USA athletes and create great experiences for them across a dispersed geography,” Hirshland said Monday. “It’s complex and it will require logistical planning. Italy is going to be a great host and the venues and towns and cities are extraordinary.”

Those Games may, incredibly, be even more far-flung if the sliding center in Cortina does not pass inspection in mid-March. Should that be the case, Lake Placid, New York, could be the host for bobsled, luge and skeleton; the Olympic Regional Development Authority has entered “targeted dialogue” with the 2026 Milano-Cortina Organizing Committee.

“Milan Cortina is incredibly focused on creating a sliding center that will be part of their Games,” Hirshland said. “We hold promise that that will happen. We will keep our fingers crossed, that is what’s best for Milan Cortina and our athletes. We have an incredible venue in Lake Placid … it’s not the ideal first plan but if it’s required, our country and the state of New York and the organizers in Lake Placid who host so many events on an annual visit will be ready.”

News And Notes

• USOPC Board Chair Gene Sykes said the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and World Anti-Doping Agency, two organizations in open conflict most of this year, “are talking with each other instead of addressing each other through press releases.” Sykes said there are still unresolved issues but “they are very much engaged in an effort to see how they can make an agreement between the two of them to move forward. … The level of engagement is both more respectful and it’s encouraged by us and others.”
• The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games will be holding its final meeting on Wednesday before an official organizing committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be formed. Sykes said the committee should be announced in early 2025 and “the selection of Utah for 2034 was a true highlight of a great year.”
• Purdue University President Mung Chiang was named to the USOPC Board of Directors. Chiang will join the board in 2025 to serve the last two years of Sykes’ recently vacated independent board seat (Sykes now serves on the board as a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee) and will be with eligible for election to two additional four-year terms. The USOPC is expecting to fill one other open independent director seat in early 2025.