The Backstory: Do the Winter Olympics Matter Anymore?

The Winter Olympics Could Be the Last Gasp of a 3000 Year Old Competition. Or . . It Could Be the Games That Bring It Back to Life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, we've been watching the Olympics this past week
or so, But did it ever occur to you what
a nightmare these events are for the host city. I mean,
imagine the giant infrastructure you have to create for the athletes,
the press, and visitors from all over the world. There
are the multitude of venues, places for the athletes and
all those spectators to sleep and eat and be entertained,

(00:24):
all for two short weeks of exposure. Well guess what
it originally looked like. These twenty twenty six Winter Games
might not happen. I'm Patty Steele. What happens when nobody
wants to come to your party? That's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. By the late twenty tens, hosting

(00:47):
the Olympics had become kind of a civic nightmare. Cities
were backing out, referendums were failing, budgets exploding. The Winter
Games in particular were starting to look like a relic,
too expensive, too destructive, and too risky for democratic countries
to justify. So when the IOC open bidding for the

(01:09):
twenty twenty six Winter Olympics, something shocking, or maybe not
so shocking, happened. Almost nobody showed up. Stockholm, Switzerland Withdrew
graz Austria backed out, Supporo, Japan hesitated, Calgary, Canada said
no again. The Winter Olympics, once the crown jewel of

(01:30):
global sport, were suddenly homeless. And that's when Italy made
an offer that wasn't ambitious at all. You've heard the line,
if you build it, they will come Riot, Well, how
about Italy's plan. If we don't build it, they will come. Seriously,
Italy's pitch was basically, what if we don't build anything.

(01:52):
Instead of promising gleaming new stadiums, Italy pitch something radical.
At least buy Olympic standards, use existing venues, spread events
across regions instead of forcing one megacity, put a cap
on costs, and finally, except that the Olympics should fit
into a country, not bulldozing. They wanted to run the

(02:14):
Games in two very different places, Milan and Cortina Dempezzo.
Milan a gorgeous city which, while historic, is also very modern,
a financial center and fashion forward. Cortina, on the other hand,
is a small Alpine town that had already hosted the
Winter Olympics once seventy years ago in nineteen fifty six,

(02:38):
Italy wasn't trying to sell a spectacle, It was selling survival.
The IOC, desperate to prove the game still had a future,
said you got it. Here's the interesting part. Unlike past games,
the Winter twenty twenty six Olympics has no single Olympic village.
No unified footprint events are scattered. There are speed skating

(03:00):
in Milan, skiing in Courtina, hockey is in cities hours apart.
Sliding events have been revived on historic tracks instead of
new megastructures. Instead of an Olympic city, the Italians offered
an Olympic network. Not everybody was a fan of the idea.
Critics called it messy, while supporters called it realistic in actuality.

(03:24):
Behind the scenes, this was the IOC quietly admitting something
it had resisted for decades. The old Olympic model was broken.
Italy already knew Olympic glory, but also the regret. The
two thousand and six Games in Turin left behind massive
debt and underused venues. Some Olympic towns went into postgames decline.

(03:47):
So for twenty twenty six, Italy made a promise it
had to keep no white elephants, no abandoned stadiums. That
meant hard compromises, including saying no to flashy new buildings,
ex accepting smaller crowds, and letting some events feel almost ordinary.
And that's what made this bid so revolutionary. There's another

(04:09):
reason the twenty twenty six Winter Games matter. It seems
winter sports are running out of winter. Reliable snow is disappearing,
temperatures are rising, Artificial snow is expensive and controversial. Cortina
was chosen not just for nostalgia, but because it's one
of the last reliable alpine climates for winter competition. Here's

(04:32):
what worries those that love the Winter Games. These may
be the last Winter Olympics that look anything like the
old ones. The Milano Cortina Olympics aren't trying to be
remembered as the biggest, loudest, or most profitable games ever.
They're trying to answer one question, can the Olympics still
exist in a modern world. If twenty twenty six works financially, environmentally, politically,

(04:58):
it'll become a blueprint. If it fails, future bids may
simply stop. No protests, no drama, just quiet abandonment. The
Olympics were born in ancient Greece as a temporary gathering
three thousand years ago, no permanent stadiums, no legacy plans,
no billion dollar footprints. Nearly three thousand years later, the

(05:21):
twenty twenty six Winter Olympics might succeed by going back
to that exact idea. Show up, compete, leave quietly, and
in doing so, Milano Kotina might not just host the games,
it might save them. Hope you're enjoying the Backstory with
Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or subscribe

(05:43):
for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel
free to dm me if you have a story you'd
like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and
on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories
a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group

(06:04):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

(06:26):
know you needed to know.