HomeBobsled & SkeletonMILAN CORTINA 2026: Report says Veneto region already reserving €143.5 million to cover organizing committee losses

MILAN CORTINA 2026: Report says Veneto region already reserving €143.5 million to cover organizing committee losses

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“[T]he precautions refer to the concrete risk of having to contribute directly to the losses that may arise from the budget deficit in the organization of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.”

That’s from a Friday report in the Rome daily, Il Fatto Quotidiano – “The Daily Fact” – that explains that the region of Veneto has placed significant set-asides in its 2025-27 budget to take care of its possible share of losses by the Fondazione Milan Cortina 2026, the organizing committee for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Italy.

Under the agreement between the affected Italian regional governments to organize the Games, the relative share of loss responsibility corresponds to the amount of Olympic and Paralympic activity in each. The story notes that the Veneto region share is 25% of the whole, specifically half of the entire risk – 50% – assigned to the Dolomite area, also including Trentino-Alto Adige (40%), and 10% to the autonomous region of Bolzano. (The Dolomite region concerned with the 2026 Winter Games is partly in Veneto and partly in Trentino-Alto Adige; the Lombardy region has the other 50%.)

In the Veneto budget:

● €115,971,831 for the “Fund for the contribution to cover the possible deficit of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

● €27,500,000 “for the share of competence equal to 50 percent of which in the ‘letter of patronage ‘ (equal to 55 million euros) signed by the Veneto Region and the Lombardy Region.”

That’s €143.472 million combined, with €1 equal to $1.08 U.S. today, against a projected possible total Milan Cortina 2026 deficit of €397,887,324, to be shared among the parties.

That’s not the actual projection, but a calculation of the possible worst-case deficit based on current data, with deficit payments assigned over a period of years.

Is this going to happen? Not necessarily, but the public finance office in Veneto is taking no chances, expecting the worst but still hoping for a break-even or surplus situation by the Milan Cortina organizers. 

But it’s a considerable sum, considering the current Veneto annual budget is €18 billion.

Good news from the construction front on the development of the time-challenged sliding track in Cortina d’Ampezzo. During last week’s 45th Forum Nordicum in Lenzerheide (SUI), International Luge Federation sports director Matthias Boehmer (GER) explained that the pre-certification inspection date for the new track has been set for 25 March 2025 and that track testing will take place in the fall of 2025. Said Boehmer:

“They’re really stepping on the gas.”

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