Passion and money owed: the blended legacy of the 2006 Turin Games

TURIN, Italy, Jan 19 (Reuters) – When Turin hosted the Winter Olympics 20 years in the past, it reworked town’s picture from gray industrial residence of the troubled Fiat car-making empire to good Mecca for meals, tradition and sport.

But the occasion – remembered within the north-western Italian metropolis for its “Passion lives here” slogan – left a legacy of enormous money owed and unused infrastructure that gives a cautionary story for Milano Cortina 2026.

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“The 2006 Games were very positive in terms of Turin’s morale and international visibility, but less so in terms of long-term infrastructure legacy,” mentioned famend Turinese architect Carlo Ratti.

“There was an incredible participation from everyone, public and private bodies, Olympic committee, everyone. That was our secret … Turin was the first Olympic city to do something I’d call popular, collective, and it went very well,” he mentioned.

Milan, Italy’s monetary capital, and the Alpine resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo will co-host the 2026 Winter Games from February 6-22.

FIAT CITY NO LONGER

The late Fiat boss Giovanni Agnelli, a towering enterprise chief of postwar Italy and the grandfather of Stellantis Chairman John Elkann, was one of many most important backers of the Olympics concept.

The Games gave Turin new or upgraded sporting venues, its first metro line, pedestrianised squares, higher motorway connections to Alpine resorts that hosted a part of the Olympics – and a brand new sense of native self-confidence.

“It put us on the map,” mentioned Marco Gay, head of native enterprise foyer Unione Industriali. “It gave us the impetus to change, not to be a one-company city but a city that knows how to excel and does well in many sectors.”

Boglione, who enlivened the 2006 Olympics with night-time facet occasions, mentioned Turin was the primary Winter Games host that embraced the Summer Olympics format, with “a big city, a big event, lots of fun and entertainment for people in town”.

EUROVISION, TENNIS AND ABANDONED FACILITIES

Tourism has flourished, because of top-notch museums – together with the world’s oldest Egyptian museum – and a spruced-up metropolis centre that bears witness to Turin’s previous as residence to the royal Savoy household and as unified Italy’s first capital.

In latest years Turin, residence metropolis of soccer golf equipment Juventus and Torino, hosted the Eurovision Song Contest and the ATP tennis finals, with each occasions staged on the Inalpi Arena, a venue initially constructed for the Olympics.

Another Olympic website, the Oval, is a candidate to host pace skating races for the French Alps 2030 Winter Olympics.

But different services have been deserted, with probably the most egregious examples in mountain valleys close to Turin: the bobsleigh observe in Cesana, closed since 2011, and ski jumps in Pragelato, additionally closed and deserted.

In Turin itself, one of many Olympic Villages has had a troubled historical past, with components vandalised and occupied by migrants and drug addicts, till the world was cleared and was scholar and social housing.

“It took a month just to clear out all the garbage and debris. They did a great job, after the previous administration had literally forgotten about us. Now the neighbourhood is liveable,” mentioned Gilberto, a pensioner who lives within the space.

Another a part of the village, the so-called “arcate” (arches) – close to Fiat’s historic Lingotto manufacturing unit, now a shopping center and museum venue – is deserted, with draft plans to show them right into a biotech park and a sports activities centre.

“The area … as it is now is a real waste, a real shame, it would be perfect for cultural initiatives,” mentioned Aurora, a 21-year-old nursery scholar. “I was born and raised here, it’s my neighbourhood, but there is nothing here”.

GAMES COME AT A COST

Francesco Ramella, a transport coverage skilled on the University of Turin and a fellow on the free-market Istituto Bruno Leoni assume tank, has estimated that the Turin Olympics price 3.3 billion euros ($3.8 billion).

They introduced long-term advantages value 2.5 billion euros, factoring in further tourism and upgraded infrastructure, which means a internet financial lack of 1.3 billion euros, the professor mentioned.

Milano Cortina is at the moment budgeted at 5.2 billion euros, together with 3.5 billion euros of public cash for infrastructure, and 1.7 billion euros in non-public funds to organise and maintain the Games.

According to a examine by Italian lender Banca Ifis, they need to generate a 5.3-billion-euro “Olympic windfall”, together with 1.2 billion euros in additional tourism income and three billion euros from upgraded infrastructure.

Turin had supplied to host the Games once more in 2026, saying it could have been a low-cost different, re-using the 2006 infrastructure. Once that was rejected, town turned down the possibility to co-host together with Milan and Cortina.

“We did Turin a favour by not participating in the three-way Olympics,” Antonino Iaria, city planning councillor in 2019-2021 for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), advised Reuters.

He mentioned town would have seen little profit from internet hosting “just two or three competitions”.

TURIN’S OLYMPIC DEBT HANGOVER

Turin is at this time one among Italy’s most indebted cities, largely as a consequence of the price of investments made out of the Nineties to organize town for the Games, even when the monetary scenario is easing.

Debt fell to three.3 billion euros on the finish of 2025 from 3.5 billion euros in 2024. Nevertheless, debt-servicing prices, standing at almost 240 million euros, took up almost a fifth of present money expenditure.

Architecture Professor Guido Montanari, deputy mayor for the M5S in 2016-2019, mentioned the post-Olympics monetary hangover pressured town into harsh price range austerity, with social and welfare spending notably affected.

Having seen what occurred in Turin, he mentioned he was “against any kind of Olympics, I think they are really something that should be avoided”.

Needless to say, Milano Cortina backers are assured theirs can be a special story.

“Every euro (for the Olympics) is a euro well spent,” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who hails from Milan, mentioned in November.

($1 = 0.8588 euros)

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