Olympics-With Games countdown on, Cortina races to build sliding centre

By Elvira Pollina, Cristiano Corvino and Claudia Greco

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (Reuters) - The town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, one of Italy's most famous ski resorts, is gearing up to co-host the 2026 Winter Olympics, marking a return of the Games to one of its traditional European venues for the first time in two decades.

As skiers enjoy the nearby Dolomites slopes and tourists stroll in the centre of the Alpine town, builders are working flat out to have the sliding centre ready for a March deadline when athletes are scheduled to test it for the first time.

Finishing the sliding centre, which will stage Olympic bob, skeleton and luge competitions, is one of the headaches facing local organisers who must also adapt to climate change that has meant natural snow is in short supply.

Cortina and Italy's biggest northern city of Milan, more than 400 kilometres (250 miles) away, are the main hosts of the Feb. 6-22 Games, with five other venues also being used before a closing ceremony in Verona.

Cortina Mayor Gianluca Lorenzi plays down any risk of losing the sliding events to Lake Placid in the U.S., a global hub for those sports, which has been surprisingly designated as a long-distance backup solution should things go wrong in Cortina.

"There are backups for everything but..., as of today, a Plan B for the bob races does not exist anymore because it has been made clear the sliding centre is being built here," said Lorenzi.

"I am not worried... Technicians are telling us the centre is going to be ready."

The International Olympic Committee echoed Lorenzi's remarks last week, reiterating that the track would be finished on time.

The IOC earlier suggested using existing venues in neighbouring Austria or Switzerland, but Italy's northeastern Veneto region and the national government ultimately opted for a full rebuilding of Cortina's Eugenio Monti track.

Named after an Italian bobsleigh racer who won two silver medals at the Winter Olympics held in Cortina in 1956, the revamped site has an estimated cost of 118 million euros ($123 million). That is part of a 3.4-billion-euro budget for the infrastructure linked to the Games.

Lorenzi is convinced that the choice to rebuild was right, arguing that Cortina has a tradition in bobsleigh and is home to one of Italy's oldest bob clubs.

"The hope is that ... young people go to practise this sport, and even people from other countries will come here; there can be events, which have often been in other countries," said 29-year-old local bakery shop worker Davide Hirschstein.

Critics argue that the revamped sliding venue risks being a white elephant given the limited number of elite competitors in sliding events and the high venue management costs.

"This centre has no future and we will be saddled with it," said Marina Menardi, the leading activist of a local committee which campaigned against the project.

There is a worrying precedent. The sliding centre used when Italy hosted the Games in 2006 in the northwestern Turin region was abandoned a few years after the Olympics and is now expected to be dismantled.

LET IT SNOW

The return of the Games to Europe comes at a time when climate change and rising temperatures are posing an existential threat to many of the region's traditional skiing centres.

By 2040 only 10 nations will be able to host the snow sports of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, according to preliminary results of studies by the IOC's future host commission for Winter Games.

A study involving the Eurac Research centre, based in Bolzano in northern Italy, showed that the amount of fresh snow on the Alps had declined by an average of 34% in the 1920-2020 period, and the reduction has accelerated since 1980.

Around 90% of Italy's ski slopes rely on artificial snow, compared with 70% in Austria, 50% in Switzerland and 39% in France, according to environmental lobby Legambiente.

That is evident in Cortina. Snow guns and groomers ensure the perfect white of its ski tracks, including the Olympia delle Tofane run, a regular World Cup venue and the course where the women's Alpine Ski events will be held.

Besides cold temperatures, water is the other essential ingredient in producing snow and keeping the pistes open from early December to April. It is pumped from artificial basins gradually filled during the spring and the summer.

"We have very careful water management because we know that we do not have infinite resources," said engineer Alberto Gaspari, a technician overseeing the operations of the Cortina pistes and cableway.

Snow guns are provided by Italian specialist company TechnoAlpin, which supplied the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and is set for a prominent role again in ensuring there is snow at the upcoming Games in its home nation.

Nemanja Dogo, the company's executive sales manager, said there is less advance work needed this time because Italian resorts already have the requisite infrastructure in place.

"Cortina, Bormio, Livigno, all these destinations have already had snow-making systems," he said, citing two of the other Olympic host centres.

Cortina enjoyed a welcome drop in temperatures and accompanying snowfall over the last week of January as the one-year countdown to the Games approaches. The Paralympics will follow with the same co-hosts in March of next year.

The town's hoteliers are looking forward to additional exposure that can help bring tourists all year round to the craggy Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

"Expectations are high," said Michael Zanatta, who runs a family hotel in Cortina. "We are excited and we are sure that the Olympics will bring a lot."($1 = 0.9586 euros)

(Reporting by Elvira Pollina, Cristiano Corvino, Claudia Greco; editing by Keith Weir and Mark Heinrich)