No backup plan for Olympic ice hockey arena, construction goes down to the wire
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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.
“There is no plan B,” Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for Milan Cortina, told the Associated Press on Saturday.
“So necessarily we have to be able to organize the competition in an impeccable manner at Santagiulia.”
The first scheduled Olympic hockey game at the arena is a women’s preliminary round match Feb. 5 between host Italy and France one day before the opening ceremonies.
Defending champion Canada faces Finland on Feb. 5 at the secondary Rho Ice Hockey Arena, which will be in a repurposed pavilion in the Fiera Milano Rho exhibition centre.
Usually, new Olympic venues are tested at least the year before hosting medal events. And with a large hockey arena it’s not just about the ice and making sure the playing surface is ready and safe. It’s also about testing concession stands, bathrooms and everything else inside a brand new arena.
Francisi admitted there is “no precise date” for the venue to be handed over to local organizers, but he is confident “for the moment” that it will be ready for the Olympics.
“There are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day,” Francisi said. “The companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.
“We’re monitoring all that daily together with them, there’s great collaboration between us, we’re creating a co-ordinated plan between their work and our preparations and for the moment we’re healthily optimistic, but 100 per cent we’ll do it.”
The men’s Olympic hockey tournament is scheduled from Feb. 11-22. The women’s tournament runs from Feb. 5-19.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics