Sawt Falasteen - Bach says Italy 'ready' to host Winter Olympics as one-year countdown begins

International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Bach asked representatives from Italy and five other national committees including the USA to join him on stage at Milan's Strehler Theatre to receive invitations to the 2026 Olympics, which will be his last as arguably the most powerful person in global sport.

"Italy is ready to write the next chapter of its great Olympic history," said Bach during the ceremony for the 25th Winter Olympics, the third in Italy after Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1956 and Turin in 2006.

Bach later insisted that the much-contested bobsleigh track for the Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, on which construction work only began a year ago, will be completed in time for an approval deadline next month.

Asked if all venues would be ready on schedule, Bach simply said "yes", and was equally monosyllabic on whether there were any chance the sliding events could be moved to the back-up venue of Lake Placid, some 6,000 kilometres (3,728 miles) away in the United States.

"No," said 71-year-old Bach, who also praised the head of Italy's hard-right government Giorgia Meloni for her "great leadership" after meeting with her in Rome on Wednesday.

Bach will step down as IOC chief in June after 12 years in charge, with a gaggle of contenders vying to replace the German former Olympic fencing champion in a vote on March 20 in Costa Navarino, Greece.

Those candidates include World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, former swimmer Kirsty Coventry and IOC veteran Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior, the latter of whom who is seeking to emulate his father who was president from 1980 to 2001.

Bach was coy in his assessment of the fight put up by the seven candidates for the votes of the 100-plus members of the IOC.

"You have to ask the candidates. I am an observer there," Bach told reporters.

"I see them running around, making contacts with the IOC members. I can feel with them because I had to do the same 12 years ago. So they have all my support and sometimes also my compassion."

- Bobsleigh controversy -

Bach said next year's Games will be the first to fully embody his agenda to make events less reliant on the building of new venues and in general have a smaller impact on the environment.

Eleven of the 13 venues already exist, but the event is spread over a vast area that extends from Milan in north-western Italy to the upmarket ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, hundreds of kilometres away in the Dolomite mountains.

Bormio and Cortina will host alpine skiing, Anterselva the biathlon, Val di Fiemme the Nordic skiing and Livigno the snowboarding and freestyle skiing, all familiar ground for the athletes as they host World Cup events every winter.

The one black mark was the bobsleigh track, which Bach and organisers are now publicly claiming will be completed in record time after political interference from Meloni's government stopped the sliding events being held outside Italy.

Organisers had to roll back on an unprecedented decision to move those events outside the host nation after no initial bidders were found to renovate the existing Eugenio Monti track, which was immortalised in the 1981 James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only".

Work eventually began in February last year to deliver a new, winding 1,650-metre (5,413-foot) track with 16 bends and complex refrigeration systems for next month. A total of 190 people are working around the clock, seven days a week on a project costing 120 million euros ($124 million).

The project has been repeatedly criticised by the IOC and local environmental groups over the last year but Cortina mayor Gianluca Lorenzi said he was "proud" of the work which appears to have enabled the sliding events to stay in Italy.

"Right now we're having a lot of complaints about the works, but these things need to be done," said Lorenzi.

"I'm proud to see construction sites... because it will be a new Cortina thanks to these Olympics."

G.AbuGhazaleh--SF-PST