MILAN (AP) — There is no backup stadium if the main ice hockey arena for the Milan Cortina Winter Games is not ready on time.
Construction on the arena that is set to welcome NHL players back to the Olympics for the first time in more than a decade is behind schedule and its completion is going right down to the wire.
A test event at the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — the new, 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan — had to be moved, and new test events aren’t scheduled until Jan. 9-11.
I saw this headline and my thinking is: “Good”.
It’s always felt really, really stupid that part of landing the Olympics is the promise of building new arenas and stadiums, and those arenas and stadiums seem to sit unused afterward. Just a huge waste when so many countries and cities already have facilities for professional sports.
I thought for a long time that there should be 4 sites for the Olympics, two for summer and two for winter. The Olympic committee maintains them with help from the host county and donations or dues from the participants counties.
Pick 4 suitable sites in as stable countries as you can find, and build world class facilities there. This whole building all new facilities every time is fucking stupid and wasteful. Besides it’s been shown that the “revenue generated” doesn’t make up for the costs to build, run, and clean up after all of it.
Most cites have accounted for that now and use the facilities for decades to come. Not always true but a hockey arena will be easy to keep relevant.
luckily hockey arenas make fantastic event centers for music or talks.
Yeah, the smaller arenas for basketball/hockey tend to be better for repurposing, but I wish the people who run the Olympics would just ditch the new stadium/arena bullshit entirely. In most cities it’s just unnecessary.