24. February 2026
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My Five Hot Takes and Thoughts about the Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games 2026

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

The book about the Olympic Games 2026 is closed – at least in regards of the winners and loosers, the medals, the stories at and around the venues. It has been the first time I have visited Olympic Winter Games in person. On top of that, I have consumed much more of the TV and stream coverage than I actually expected. A bit of provocative, there are five thoughts, some with a hot take quality, about the future of the sports event. Happy to discuss with you about them.

 

My Five Hot Takes from the 2026 Winter Games

Here my five key thoughts, based on the Olympic Winter Games 2026 in Milan and Cortina, Italy:

 

1. Olympic Games in Cologne? No Thanks!

Germany is planning to apply to organize Olympic (Summer) Games in 2036, 2040, or 2044. While the IOC process is expected to get leaner, the German NOC DOSB is doing some sort of battle of four regions. Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin are rather “classic” candidates. The fourth one is having my home town Cologne as host city Cologne, using the venues and arenas in the Rheinland and Ruhrgebiet region. Of course, having the Olympic Games in my own town feels like a dream coming true. I would love to welcome the world in Cologne. The recent events in handball and soccer were amazing. However, the reason why Milan taught me to change my mind is distance and commuting. Having the inevitable contrast between remote mountain locations and major venue city locations is somehow a feature of the Olympic Winter Games.

However, the transport and commute was simply too much. I did not buy tickets in Italy because I did not want to leave my Milan hotel very early in the morning to visit an Antholz biathlon session. The Games in France in 2030 will be even worse with the venues being even more widespread over Southeast France. I loved visiting two very different sports in Paris and having the option to choose between a wide range of events offered. The larger the size of the area is which is hosting the event, the less you will be able to do it. Olympic Games should also have as few as possible Olympic Villages in my point of view. If you have athletics in Cologne, rowing in Duisburg and swimming in Dortmund (or whatever…), you won’t be able doing that. Getting from one sports to another will be a hassle, for athletes and visitors. Even the locals might need hotels, finally. There won’t be a big center of Olympic spirit, but several, rather small islands. I also doubt that this concept can be sustainable.

 

2. Don’t Demean for the Big Stars

Of course, Olympic Games nowadays should feature the best athletes for each sports. Thus, having the NHL and PWHL players in the ice hockey events in the recent games was such a big value. However, I felt that the IOC and the IIHF (the International Ice Hockey Federation) put too much focus on it. The matches were presented in an NHL way rather than reflecting European fan culture, for example. I also did not like that there were so many referees from North America. Of course, they might be better. But just having one IIHF umpires in the two men’s medal matches (compared to three NHL ones) also means that you have a wasted chance to develop the referees. In Europe as well as in North America, there is struggle that the referees keep up with the speed of the game. The Games did not create idols in Europe who attract other people to become an ice hockey game lead.

Finally, of course, the focus was too much on the players from North America. This reduced the focus on good performance by the European players, like Swiss goalie Leonardo Genoni, who is playing in Zug in the domestic league. I feel it is great that we had all these star players – but the IIHF needs to be more confident if the same happens in three years in France.

 

3. Olympic Games cannot be sustainable – and will never be…

I already talked about the long commutes from the “city location” Milan to Cortina, Predazzo or Livigno. Energy consumption at the Olympic Games are not just about the venues. There are masses of transport and logistic necessary. It is about people traveling in from all over the world. It is about traffic congestion on the road because public transport got some limitation. And, there is so much energy needed for broadcasting, streaming, and – nowadays – running massive AI server farms to create views of what just happened from all possible angles and with all kinds of animation. It is about social media.

Olympic Games do have a negative ecological impact. Even if we are able to build “better” venues than ever, this won’t change. Maybe modern communication even makes it much worse. Explicitly, this does not mean that I am against Olympic Games. I just demand honesty. And I feel Olympic Games should reduce any kind of “one-time efforts”. Like venues you likely won’t need any more thereafter. Like roads and infrastructure which will be oversized after two weeks. During my time in Italy, I used one day visiting the mountain venues of Torino 2026. It is likely much more impressing in summer, the snow covered the wounds and issues in February 2026. You still cannot miss the Pragelato ski jumping hill, which is no longer used for competitive sports. In summer, you can even walk up the ruins of the Cesana bobsleigh track. In my point of view, the IOC should discuss more closely if the host your choose is able to run a certain sports with a sensible outlook and impact. In worst case, I would even support kicking these sports out temporarily.

 

4. Bobsleigh, Cross-Country Skiing need to reduced – maybe until they are removed

For my alternative medal count of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, I did an analysis of the distribution of medals by sports. On the bottom of the table, there is alpine skiing, short track, bobsleigh, biathlon, speed skating, and – at the very bottom – cross country skiing. Only two countries, Sweden and Norway, won golden medals at the Milan-Cortina Games 2026 in that sports. You could say that Norway’s Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, who won six golden medals, was the star of the games. Without reducing his amazing athletic performance,

I see that differently: he showed that there is too much cross-country skiing at Olympic Winter Games. If an athlete can win the golden medal in cross-country sprint as well as in the 50km race, there is something wrong. Imagine at the 2028 Olympics, Noah Lyles (USA) repeats his golden medal in 100m sprint… and a week later, he is also first in marathon. If you have too many events with the same winner, you need to change the competition. In that case, a discipline is just there to blow up the Olympic events, in my point of view.

Stop the ice track!

Yeah, the ice track is Germany’s winter sports hubby. In Italy, my home country won 19 out of their 26 medals in bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton. But especially due to that situation, the same argument applies. And, on top of that: while you can use a cross-country resort for touristic reasons after Winter Games, the world of sports already has a sufficient number of ice tracks.

Either, the Cortina 2026 track will end up like the previous one there or the Cesana one (as a ruin, which is not used for competition) or passes the faith to a different location somewhere in Europe. It comes back to the impact of a sports. We simply don’t need more ice tracks. Maybe you should do the same like sailing or surfing in Summer Games, and put these events (if you want to save them) to a location already existing.

 

5. Olympic Games are about Team Sports – let more of them in

To me, the real winner of the Olympic Games in regards of the events are team events. Relays, team competition, mixed relays and, last but not least, ice hockey and curling were the stars of these two weeks to me. People enjoy weird new events like the ski jumping super team event. One factor for that might be that in team events, countries face each other, not individual. They represent the idea of Olympic teams.

I feel we should give the people what they want to see. Even though I feel that events like the super team I quoted were a bit of strange. I would even think about whether to bring in some indoor field team events to the Winter Games, like handball, volleyball or basketball. This would also schedule-wise split the “main sports” to the “modern style one”, like beach volleyball or 3×3 basketball. Currently, having handball in Winter Games, for example, is not possible by definition. I nonetheless feel that these sports could be a cool addition. and also ease capacity issues in Olympic Summer Games.

 

Flyctory.com on Sports Museums

Here are all Sports Museums I visited:

 

Postings about Handball

Here are all my postings related to handball:

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