Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 5 (Milan)

 February 11

Today, we are off to Men's Ice Hockey. But before that, you might want to see what my Olympic gear looks like:

Steve's been adding a few pins to his pin vest every day and still has a few to go, but he is definitely noticing the added weight (counting the 20 giveaway pins and about 10 "high level" pins to trade in the pockets). On the plus side, we've had dozens of conversations and one TV interview because of the outfit.

Today's event is our first at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. You may have read about this stadium. In what appears to be typical behavior, this stadium was not finished until four days before the start of the Olympics. We say typical because when we attended the 2006 Olympics in Turin, there was one whole subway line that did not get done in time. But transportation is one thing and venues are completely different. For months, the National Hockey League has been freaking out about this arena as the construction fell further and further behind. They were finally able to do a low-scale test event and a big hole opened up in front of one of the goals! Even worse, it emerged that this ice surface is smaller than NHL ice surfaces and international ice surfaces which are even bigger. They solved the length problem by shrinking the space between the two blue lines, but the width is still a foot or two short. In reality, the stadium was really never finished as the original seating capacity dropped from 16,000 to a little more than 11,000 because seating in one end is partially missing.

Still, it looks pretty nice inside:

As you can see, we are close to the top of the stadium even though these are B level seats. We guess that is because we are the long side of the oval. Today's match is between Slovakia and Finland. Finland is widely expected to be one of the medal favorites because their lineup is almost completely composed of NHL players. But tell that to the Slovak fans. They came in huge numbers:

Up here in the nose-bleed section, we have mostly Finnish fans other than the American families on either side of us. The stairs to the seats are pretty steep which usually means that everyone can see quite well. Unfortunately, they constructed railings in front of the first row in the upper bowl to keep people from falling out of the stands and the top railing is at about eye level. As a result, everyone in the first row leans forward to see. This blocks the view of the people in the row behind them and so on. So, Steve can only take pictures at the far end of the rink.

We are rooting for Slovakia, because one of their players, Pavol Regenda, plays for the San Jose Sharks. Here is a picture of Pavol (#84):

Pavol already has an Olympic medal from the Beijing Olympics because he was not in the NHL during the Olympics (NHL players did not attend the Beijing Olympics). The rosters in Beijing consisted of minor league players from North America and professionals playing in Europe.

The Finnish fans are shocked when Juraj Slafkovsky, who plays for the Montreal Canadians and was the overall NHL #1 draft choice four years ago, scores about 8 minutes into the game. For most of the rest of the first period, Slovakia held onto the lead thanks to some great goaltending by Samuel Hlavaj.  Hlavaj plays in the American Hockey League (NHL minor league) in the Minnesota Wild farm system. They might want to reconsider having this guy playing in the minors. The Finns finally tied the score near the end of the second period, but total shots at this point were Finland 33, Slovakia 16. Slovakia is only in this game because of great efforts from Hlavaj and his defensemen. Finland put the Slovaks under intense pressure in the 3rd period, but when Dalibor Dvorsky (St. Louis Blues) scores about 7 minutes into the period, all the air goes out of the Finnish balloon, and they give up 2 more goals for a final score of Slovakia 4, Finland 1. Here are some pictures from this game:

Transportation back from the stadium worked really well! The volunteers directed people going to the metro to one of the exits. At the end of a fairly long walk, we see volunteers holding big signs on long sticks saying GO on one side and STOP on the other to keep people walking down the exit path from getting crushed when they reach the point where people are waiting to board the shuttle buses taking everyone back to the metro station. When the bus line gets too long, the STOP sign goes up and when the buses queue is reduces, the GO signs go up. Very simple and effective! When we get to the bus queue, we find that people also have the choice of walking, but the bus ride coming to the arena was about 4 minutes. This seemed like a little too long of a walk, so we wait. We are finally able to get on the fourth bus. By the time we reached the metro station, we find a half-empty training waiting for us - it doesn't get better than that.

The route back to our "home" stop of Vesta requires one change at Duomo and another at the next station San Babila. Since the Duomo station is always packed and we've already walked from Duomo to San Babila, we decide to exit at Duomo and walk to the San Babila station. We are so glad that we did. The area looks great at night:

It is already about 8:30pm when we exit the Vesta station - too late for a big dinner, but we haven't eaten anything since lunch, so we stop at a pizzeria that sells pieces of pizza by weight, and the costs are quoted per 100g. We both get a spinach, goat cheese and sun-dried tomato pizza and Steve gets a tomato and cheese pizza to go with it. Then we head back to the hotel and watch some of the men's singles figure skating on TV before going to bed.

Tomorrow, we are off to Men's Ice Hockey (Canada versus Czechia). Enjoy!

Note: it is now the evening of September 13. Steve is feeling a little better, but Beth is still not doing well so we did not go to our event today (Men's Ice Hockey Slovakia vs Italy). Tomorrow morning, we have a 8:30am train (and bus) to Cortina for the second half of our Olympic trip. More when we have time to write more.

 

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 4 (Milan)

February 10

From a medical point-of-view, it is easy to view large sporting events like the Olympics as a giant superspreader event. Have it happen during the winter when you've got COVID, Flu and RSV all circulating. Then you disrupt people's sleep schedules with long flights and again with alternating early and late events. The start times and, often, the poor venue food effects eating schedules as well. Then you cram everyone into metro trains and long queues to enter the venues, and it is easy to get everyone infected with something. Steve began feeling crummy on the 11th and Beth a day later. Steve was negative for COVID yesterday (February 12), but who knows for today. In any case, this has disrupted the rhythm of these blogs. Sorry for the delay!

Today (February 10th), we had tickets for short-track speed skating at the same arena where the figure skating is being held. As for any speed-skating event, the Dutch fans are here in big numbers:

We laugh when we find that we are sitting next to the same two Dutch women that we sat next to at long-track two days earlier. We are sitting in the next-to-top row of the stadium so the pictures aren't as good as Steve would like.

The first event is the preliminaries for the women's 500m. The US has two really strong skaters: Kristen Santos-Griswold and Corinne Stoddard. In the 500m, the strongest skater typically goes right to the front and tries to outlast the people behind her. Corinne is in the first heat:

Since Corinne is one of the fastest skaters on the world tour, she prefers to get to the front and avoid what the British call argy-bargy - the competition to keep your position or to move up. Surprisingly, the Chinese skater had the lead after the first lap and as Corinne passed her coming out of a turn, the lost her balance and slid across the ice on her butt into the crash barriers. We look at each other and say, "that's short-track". There is always some mayhem going on. Most of the other favorites including Santos-Griswold make it through to the semi-finals. Here are a couple of other pictures from the eight preliminary races:

Notice that the angle between the skaters and the ice are really low, especially in the corners. This is the only way that they can maintain the speed they are carrying into the turns.

During the ice resurfacing between the women's 500m and the men's 1000m races, we were wondering about these faint dots next to the small markers that mark the corners of the track:

During the 1000m, we figure it out. The skaters are often going as fast as 40mph in these corners on skate blades that would make steak knives seem dull. So, the ice takes a tremendous beating. Every race, they move all of the dots one way or the other so that the ice in the corners stays relatively fresh. In the 500m, they either move the dots toward the center or away from the center and then adjust the start line so that the race always ends at the same point. We learned something new!

The 1000m men's preliminaries were much more predictable with almost all of the favorites advancing to the quarterfinals although Brandon Kim of the US was penalized for a late pass (attempting to pass too close to the corner) which caused both he and a skater from Latvia to crash. Since the crash was judged to be the fault of the American and they were judged to be in a qualifying position at the time, the Latvian skater was advanced to the quarterfinals. Here are some of our pictures from these races:

The final event of the day are the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals of the 2000m mixed team event. In this one, teams, consisting of two men and two women who take turns skating, compete in 3 races with 4 teams per race. The "handoff" is usually made by the person coming onto the track being pushed up to race pace by the person completing their skate. In the middle of the ice, you have people who are coming up to speed and synchronizing their position for the handoff. With a possible 8 skaters in the handoff zone at any given time, getting into position and avoiding crashing into anyone else is a challenge:

In the first heat, the powerful Dutch team set an Olympic record and easily beat Italy, Poland and Hungary, but the Italians in the crowd were happy because the Italian team qualified for the semi-finals. In the second race, Corinne Stoddard crashed again in almost exactly the same way. Fortunately, Kristen Santos-Griswold was able to receive the handoff from Corinne as she was sliding on the ice. This still left the Americans quite far behind a qualifying spot. Fortunately for them, there was a crash between the Japanese and French right at the end of the race that allowed the US to advance to the next round. The Japanese were penalized and the French were also advanced to the semifinals along with the winning South Korean team. In the last race, the strong Canadian team won followed by the Chinese. This race was so fast that even though the Belgian team finished third, they were advanced to the semifinals as the fastest third place team.

In the first semifinal, Xandra Velzeboer from the Dutch team, and probably the world's best women's speed skater, crashed in the straightaway when their team was far out in front, shocking the Dutch fans. As a result, the Italians won the race and qualified for the finals ahead of the Chinese team. In the second semifinal, Corinne went three for three and crashed again. Like us, she looked like she couldn't figure out what was going on. We found out later that a number of the skaters had said that the ice surface was quite soft to begin with (maybe because of sharing the ice surface with the figure skaters??) and it got even worse with 10,000+ spectators in the building. The fact that it has been in the 50's (F) every day this week probably also did not help. It seems to affect the fastest skaters the most because they are creating the highest forces in the corners. When Corinne fell, she also took out a South Korean skater, so Canada won this race with Belgium finishing second. Since South Korea was not in a qualifying position at the time of the crash, they were not advanced. This meant that 3 of the top 5 ranked teams in the world would not be in the finals!

In the B final, the Dutch showed how good they are and set another Olympic record to win. Julie Letai, who subbed in for Corinne in the final, also fell so the Americans finished last. In the final, we expected the Canadians, who were the highest ranked team left, to win. But perhaps driven on by the fans, the Italians skated a completely clean race while the Canadians had a couple of near crashes and won the gold medal. The Canadians won the silver and the Belgians, who arguably should not have even made it past the first round, ended up with the bronze medal. They were almost as excited as the Italians at the end! Here are some pictures from the mixed team race:

Since it was close by, we decide to go see the Olympic torch. We came out of the metro at the closest stop and see this:

We have found the Olympic sponsor village! Since they are basically paying for most of the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee always gives the sponsors an opportunity to market their products, educate potential customers and sell some merchandise. The lines are really long, and we are not really interested anyway so we pass on Alibaba and the other sponsors and continue heading in the direction that Google maps tells us to go. Up ahead, we see the Castello Sforzesco (the Sforza Castle):

What the Medici family was to Florence is what the Sforzo family was to Milan beginning in the mid-15th century and ending in 1535. When the last member of the previous Visconti Duchy died, the Sforzo's took power mostly by military force. It is ironic that sforza means force or effort in Italian. That, their authoritarian tendencies and high rates of taxation made them quite unpopular rulers. This small picture does not give you much of an idea of how huge this building is. We'll come back to this and the Sforzo family on another day. For now, we know that we need to go around it to get to the Olympic flame.

The flame is housed in the Arco della Pace (Arch of Peace):

It is in roughly the same place as the Porta Sempione (Semplon gate) which was one of the exits from the walls around the Roman city that predated Milan. The Strada del Sempione on the other side of the gate is still in use and supposedly goes directly to Paris from Milan. The arch itself was begun in 1807 when Napoleon ruled northern Italy but was not completed until 1838 due to the capture of Milan, first by the Austrian empire and then again by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

The flame itself was, at least to us, a little underwhelming:

Yes, it has a beautiful knot pattern that we understand was devised by Leonardo da Vinci, but the flame is so small that it just doesn't show up in the daytime. We've seen pictures of it at night and it is a completely different story. There is a light show that lights up the Arch in different colors with inspiring music playing. You can also see the lights on the cauldron around the flame pulse and the flame shows up much better. Unfortunately, our preferred sleep pattern is incompatible with this schedule so we have to make do with what we can see.

We have a nice walk through the large park around the Castello Sforzesco, get on the metro and head for our hotel. When we get back, we aren't particularly hungry, so we decide to have gelato for dinner and then go to bed.

Tomorrow, we have the first of three straight days of Men's Ice Hockey. The first game features Slovakia and Finland. Enjoy (as soon as we feel well enough to write another blog)!

Note: My proofreader is under the weather, so any illiteracies are solely due to yours truly. 

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 3 (Milan)

February 9

One agreement that we made many years ago is that at each Olympics we have to take time out to see stuff that is not Olympic related. Today is our only day off from attending competitions so we are off to see the Duomo, the huge cathedral in the center of Milan. We were expecting that the subways would be busy with people going to work so we left with plenty of time to spare to get through security before the start of our 10 AM tour. But there were hardly any people on the metro and we arrived in the piazza di Duomo more than an hour ahead of time! The Olympic superstore, located in the piazza doesn't open until 9:30 AAM so we decide to walk all the way around the Duomo and take some pictures of the outside along with a better picture of the Galleria di Emanuella II:

The Duomo is built in an architectural style called Flamboyant Gothic. In 355 CE, there was a church at this site and a basilica was added about 500 years later. When both burned in 1075, 

they were rebuilt as the Duomo. But in 1386, Archbishop Saluzzo started construction of a new cathedral on the same site. It would not be completed until 1965! It was interesting that even though construction stalled for long periods of time and Gothic architecture gave way to Renaissance architecture, they still kept building in the same style. It is hard to express just how huge this cathedral is. It took us a good 15 minutes to walk all the way around! It is the largest cathedral in Italy - St. Peters is bigger, but it is actually in Vatican City, not in Italy.

We get to the elevator that will take us up to the roof for the beginning of the tour, but we are still 45 minutes ahead of time. Beth decides to ask one of the security people if we can go in early. She takes a look at the number of people in line and waves us ahead. After going through security, we get on an elevator that will take us up to the terraces on the roof. But the elevator first drops us at a level even with the top of the perimeter walls. There are a lot of statues up here! These pictures will give you an idea of the different styles:

No idea who these people are, but we have what looks like Greeks, Romans and more traditional Italians. Here are a couple more views from this level:

You can see that every single spire is different. We also see places where some of these spires have been removed, cleaned and replaced. There was some scaffolding up for repairs on the west side of the Duomo and even more on the eastern side. We guess that there are just so many elements up here that there are always some parts that need to be cleaned or repaired.

After we've walked most of the way along one wall, we turn left and start walking up stairs to the terraces. Here is the view:

This is supposed to be the place to get a great view of Milano, but it is quite foggy so we can't see much. Beth's guidebooks say that WW II Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is supposed to have his head up here somewhere, but we can't find it. Going downstairs to the cathedral is a lot harder on our knees, but we finally make it down. On the way down, we collected a few pictures of gargoyles and other strange critters:

At the point where the stairway enters into the cathedral, we see this statue of Gian Giacomo Medici:

of the famous Medici family who were very influential in northern Italy during the 15th century. We think that he is here because of money that his family contributed to the construction of the Duomo in the 15th and 16th century. 

Steve is a sucker for stained glass, so let's do those pictures first:

At first, we were a little confused because these stained-glass windows did not look like those from the 15th and 16th centuries based on what we learned while in Paris in 2024. We looked in the guidebook, and it indicated that all of the windows were replaced with painted glass starting in the 16th century although there is one window that still has stained-glass from the 15th century.

Here are our other pictures from the cathedral:

We hope that a couple of these pictures give you an idea of how big this cathedral is. It is said to have a capacity of 40,000 people! There is one thing that we wanted to show you but could not. In the late 18th century, a small hole was put in the roof of the west end of the cathedral, and a meridian line was laid across the floor. When the sun shines, a ray of light falls on the meridian line when it is solar noon. In the olden days, someone would see the image of the sun cross the meridian line and would signal a nearby tower who would relay the signal to the Sforza Castle where a cannon would be fired to indicate that it was noon. In addition, the place along the meridian where the image of the sun crosses indicates the month. In 1976, Architects and Astronomers exampled the meridian line and calculated that the maximum error on the time of solar noon was 2 seconds! Unfortunately, there was no sun visible today.

We went out onto the piazza and decided that we would walk over to see how long the line to get into the superstore was. It was about double the length of the other day and we decided that we didn't want anything in there bad enough to stand in line for 30 minutes. As we walked back, Steve watched for people who might be interested in trading pins but saw no one.

He was just remarking that it was amazing that he could walk across such a crowded piazza and not have anyone want to trade pins when a guy came up to us and asked Steve if he was willing to be interviewed by Xfinity (Comcast). This is not the first time that this has happened, so he agreed. The interviewer asked Steve about how he came to have so many pins while the director made sure that we were standing in the right place and the camera and sound were ready. Then the interviewer asked Steve three questions. The first one was what has been Steve's favorite Olympic moment in Milano. Steve answered that seeing Francesca Lollobrigida win a gold medal (Italy's first) and set a personal best at the same time was his favorite moment. The second question was if Steve could get a gold medal in anything, what would it be. He thought for a second and said that he'd like to win a gold medal in being a good Olympic ambassador for the US. The last question was what Winter Olympic Sport would you like to do. Steve said bobsled. The interviewer asked if someone looked at Steve, would they think that Steve would be good at bobsled. Steve laughed and said absolutely not. Most of the successful bobsled athletes are shaped like football middle linebackers. After that, Steve was asked to sign a release saying that I would not sue Xfinity and we were on out way.

The rest of the day was much less eventful. Steve was not feeling great (lack of both sleep and food) so we went back to the hotel so that Steve could lay down for a while and then work on the blog while Beth went to the local laundromat to wash some of our clothes.

Tomorrow, we are off to short-track speed skating. Enjoy!