Italy is preparing for the Olympic Games. Not only athletes are heading to the country, but also hundreds of thousands of fans and many celebrities.
In just a few days, the Winter Olympics will begin in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo. From the 6th to the 22nd of February, they will attract many sports fans. The Czech delegation will compete in the largest number ever achieved in history. The opening and closing ceremony will then belong to a number of celebrities - such as the singers Mariah Carey, Laura Pasini, the tenor Andrea Bocelli, or even the global ballet star Roberto Bolle.
Our fans put most of their hopes in Ester Ledecká, the Olympic champion in the Super-G from 2018. Apart from downhill skiing, Ester will also test her mettle in snowboarding. Other hopefuls include, for example, snowboarder Eva Adamczyková, speed skater Martina Sáblíková, and skier Jan Zabystřan. The hockey players are also given a chance. However, they themselves admit that their chances of success may not be as large as the public may imagine. Even though our hockey team will have nearly half of the players from the NHL on the roster, including a drawcard like David Pastrňák, the competition will be large.
"It will be harder, because the tournament will be significantly higher quality, but we would like to follow up on Prague,"
said to the server Hokej.cz the chief of the Czech bench Radim Rulík, when he recalled our gold from the world championship in 2024. After a long twelve years, this time the tournament will feature especially in the selections of Canada, the United States and Sweden also their best players from the NHL.
The new sport to be introduced in Italy will be ski mountaineering. Its inclusion will be a major event. The last time snowboarding was added was in Nagano in 1998. Medals will be awarded in ski mountaineering in five disciplines - men's and women's sprint, individual race and mixed relay.
Wrinkles on the forehead are caused by the organizers and athletes themselves, due to the condition of some of the venues. Criticism is aimed in particular at the multipurpose Santa Giulia hall on the outskirts of Milan, where some of the Olympic hockey matches will take place, including the Czech team's match. According to available information, the interior of the building is still being completed. The first Olympic hockey match is supposed to be in the hall on Thursday, February 5, when the women's teams of Italy and France will compete.
Million Rewards
The controversy associated with the Olympics recently was also caused by the decision of the new Czech government. On the one hand, it promised higher financial rewards for our athletes for precious metals than in the past, but at the same time it forgot that para-olympians will only get half of the stated amount in such a case. However, under public pressure, the Minister of Sport Boris Šťastný later increased their rewards as well.
So how much can our athletes earn thanks to the Italian Olympics? In individual sports, it's 2.4 million for a gold medal, 1.8 for silver and 1.2 million for bronze. In case any collective team succeeds and also gets a valuable medal, the final reward will be recalculated according to the coefficient.
Artists and Politicians
In addition to sport, the whole event will also be a social affair. Five-time Grammy winner Mariah Carey will perform at the opening ceremony. Another superstar will be Italian singer Laura Pasini, who won a Grammy in the Best Latin American Pop Album category back in 2006. Five years ago, her song from the film The Life Ahead, in which Sophia Loren played the main role, was nominated for an Oscar. Probably even more fans will be drawn to screens by tenor Andrea Bocelli, whose albums have been selling in multi-million copies since the 1990s. At the closing ceremony will then be the star of world ballet, Roberto Bolle.
But it will also likely touch on politics. Immigration and Customs agents, who are being discussed in connection with the shooting of two Americans in Minneapolis, are heading to Italy. Their task will be to protect the American delegation. They will join the security team of the American State Department to investigate and mitigate risks arising from transnational criminal organizations. The aforementioned idea has already sparked significant criticism.
"As the mayor of Milan and as an Italian, I don't want this de facto private militia to come to Milan. It is a force that acts entirely illegally. Besides killing, they also enter citizens' houses without any permission,"
quoted the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, on the server TN.cz.
Defenders of this approach, however, argue that there could be a valid reason for the checks. After all, the opening ceremony will be attended by celebrities and fans, but also by the US Vice President J. D. Vance and Foreign Minister Marco Rubio.
Sources: author's article, ČTK, Seznam News, Hokej.cz, TN.cz
