A coincidence of the calendar? A little over a week before the next visit of the IOC Coordination Commission, scheduled for the end of the month, work finally began on Monday February 19 on the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton track in Cortina d'Ampezzo. It was time. But, not surprisingly, the first groundbreakings were disrupted by the presence of several environmental defense groups. The Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano reports that local authorities had taken the lead in closing access to the area to the public and prohibiting the stopping or parking of vehicles. But opponents of the project to renovate the historic Eugenio-Monti track do not intend to be intimidated. In particular, they could try to delay the work by chaining themselves to the trunks of the 500 trees threatened by the construction site. Two years before the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games, the timing is more than tight. The Italian organizers know this. Still looking for a possible plan B, they confirmed, one week before the arrival of the IOC delegation, to continue discussions with other skiing sites, including Innsbruck in Austria, St. Moritz in Switzerland, Koenigssee in Germany, and even Lake Placid in the United States.
