With the lightness that distinguishes him, when he wants to make an announcement making it go unnoticed, the Venetian governor Luca Zaia communicates that the bob track Of cortina d’Ampezzofor the Winter Olympics 2026could cost up to 120 million euros. It is the first time that the president of the Veneto region, a convinced sponsor of the work, admits that the threshold of 100 million will be widely exceeded. This is not a trivial affirmation, given that the last official figure, contained in the feasibility project, set a 85 million euros the expected expenditure, after an adjustment of about twenty million due to increases in raw material. So the track has already risen by another 35 million euros, equal to an increase of 41 percent.
In reality, the numbers also tell another truth. The cost for the complete reconstruction of the old one track “Eugenio Monti” of 1956 has tripled compared to the initial forecast. In the olympic masterplanwhich allowed in 2019 a Milan-Cortina 2026 to win the Games, the figure indicated was 47,712,000 US dollars, at the 2018 value. Since the exchange rate was then equal to 1.14, the value in euros was 41.7 million. At the time, Veneto had ensured that the Region would put the money there, which in fact in 2019 with law no. 44 allocated 85 million euros for the planned interventions. In September 2021 the feasibility project of the alternatives prepared by the Treviso company DBA Prohad already set the cost at 50.7 million euros, including 38 million euros for the works and 22.7 million for planning, expropriations, unexpected events, VAT, administrative expenses and advertising.
He was called a Cassandra who remembered how the trail of Turin Cesanafor the 2006 Olympicscost 110 million euros and was closed after 6 years due to excessive costs maintenance and scarce utilization. In December 2021, with Mario Draghi a new announcement had come to the presidency of the council: the cost had grown to 62 million euros, but would be covered by the state. So the Veneto would not have paid anything, even if all the Italians would have done so. In the technical-economic feasibility project of theApril 2022 here is a new cold shower. Due to increases in the price of raw materials, it rises to 85 million euros. The missing 22 million? The Region should put them there. However, the person in charge of the procedure warned: “It is clear that future increases in the prices of raw materials will not find coverage within the general framework of expenditure. In December the extraordinary commissioner Luigi Valerio Sant’Andrea he made a lukewarm hint of an even higher figure, 93 million euros. At the end of the year Our Italy announced that it would reach 100 million.
The statements now released by Zaia, three years after the event, make the scenario even more disconcerting. “Let’s live these Olympic Games as a celebration – he said – We cannot spend our days hearing that it is one waste and that we will never make it… the usual Italian lament borrowed from the Portuguese ‘fado’. We try to look to the future thinking that only pessimists don’t make a fortune”. The Northern League governor even managed to advertise his book, a hymn to optimism. It’s always the others who pay. He immediately remembered it. “It is the State that bears the expense of 100 or perhaps even 120 million, for what will be the first Paralympic bobsleigh track, with little impact compared to the current excellent corpse”. However, even Zaia seems to cultivate some retrospective thoughts, given that he has felt attacked by citizens, not only from Cortina, from environmental associations and by some opposition parties. “Naively, because perhaps today I would make a different reflection, at the beginning of this journey I said: let’s reclaim that dump (the old track, ndr) and revitalize the bob. I understand that many thought we were joking, but we have the Olympics and there is excitement. We will bring our regions back to the global sports scene.” He concluded by recalling how the growth of pil for one billion euros it will reward Italy and also the Veneto mountains, with new ones infrastructure (however paid for by the State and in 2026 they will only be on paper) and with earnings directly linked to the Games.