Next year’s Olympics might be called the Milan Cortina Games but it will actually be staged across a large swath of northern Italy spread over five different venue clusters.

Athletes are seen at the shooting range during a Biathlon World Cup event at the Anterselva Biathlon Arena, venue for the biathlon discipline at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, in Anterselva, northern Italy, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)

The International Olympic Committee has set a deadline for the end of next month for pre-certification of the Cortina track. There is a Plan B option that would require moving bobsled, luge and skeleton events all the way to Lake Placid, New York, if it isn’t finished in time.

Italy began the one-year countdown to the Winter Olympics on Thursday with a series of events designed to fuel enthusiasm for the Games that will be co-hosted by Milan and the Alpine town of Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Olympic curling champion Eve Muirhead believes Milan-Cortina 2026 will be a mix of the Winter Games’ past and future as it combines alpine resort settings with a wide geographic spread of existing venues to keep costs down.

Sochi’s media village was still under construction, and showers ran yellow when journalists arrived for the 2014 Winter Games. The 2016 Rio

Milan Cortina Winter Games, which open one year from today, feature the Olympic debuts of one sport and five new events within existing sports. The Opening Ceremony is next Feb. 6 at the San Siro Stadium in Milan.

A number of local athletes are pushing to compete at the Olympics in Italy in 2026. SEATTLE — When it comes to the winter games, Colorado, Utah, and Minnesota will produce a lot of Olympic athletes, but the state of Washington also has a long history of representing,