With the atmosphere in Rome subdued as the Winter Olympics unfolded across northern Italy, travelling to the Games was not on Amity Neumeister’s radar.
That was until the event entered its second week and, inspired by images of the Dolomites on TV, Italy racking up the medals and friends in Milan describing an energetic vibe, Neumeister, originally from the US, decided she wanted to join the action. “It was a late-night, last-minute crazy decision, completely unplanned,” she said. “I hadn’t even considered going before, but it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Games and celebrate people coming together from around the world.”
Neumeister, who owns a yoga studio in Rome, snapped up tickets for figure skating, “because that has always been my favourite sport in the Olympics”. She grew up in the US’s Pacific north-west, “where Tonya Harding was a household name”. “I was super-excited to be going to a live competition,” she added.
If the streets in the Italian capital felt largely bereft of Olympics fever, the numbers told a different story. Neumeister was among the more than 1.27m spectators who had bought tickets by the event’s midway point, filling venues to an average 85% of their available capacity.
For what has been the most geographically scattered Winter Olympics ever, that was no small feat. Held under the official banner of Milano Cortina, the Games stretched across almost 8,500 square miles, encompassing Alpine villages in Lombardy such as Bormio and Livigno, along with Anterselva and Val di Fiemme in Trentino-Alto Adige, before wrapping up with Sunday’s closing ceremony in Verona. The vast footprint presented complex logistical challenges for its organisers and athletes, and provided no single hub for its spectators to celebrate.
Speaking to reporters last week, Andrea Varnier, the Milano Cortina Games chief executive, said: “We know that this is not a walk in the park.” He added: “We are completely aware that we are pioneers when it comes to this edition of the Games. We knew that we had many challenges and, after one week, most of them seem to have been overcome.”
But as fan zones in Milan and the mountain villages heaved, the majority of Italians have quietly embraced the Games from their homes. Across Europe, public broadcasters recorded multimillion audience figures. In Italy, Rai overcame the embarrassment of its gaffe-ridden opening ceremony commentary to attract a peak audience of 4.9m for its early skiing coverage, including 4.1m as Sofia Goggia won bronze for the women’s downhill and 4.5m when Federica Brignone secured her second gold medal for the women’s giant slalom.
But it wasn’t just the action-packed sports that pulled in the TV viewers. Large audiences have been recorded for skating while 3.3m spectators tuned in to Rai to watch Italy defeat Great Britain in the mixed doubles curling – a sport often dismissed as boring due to its slow-pace.
“It has all been absolutely joyful,” said Costanza Barone, a journalist in Rome who has been watching the Games on TV. “The skiing, the skating and yes, even the curling – it is a very relaxing sport to watch, but at the same time it gives you a lot of energy.”
Barone praised the organisation and spirit of the athletes. “For me, one of the best things has been seeing all these young faces who seem very loyal to each other and even if they lose, they don’t get cross,” she said. “It has also been a wonderful distraction from all the bad news.”
The success of Italian competitors has no doubt fuelled interest in the host country. Italy has had its most successful Winter Olympics ever after winning more than 26 medals, eclipsing the 21 gained in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.
But with the Olympics traditionally being a hotbed for political protests, whether it be among the athletes or street demonstrations, this edition of the Winter Olympics did not pass untroubled. In the lead-up, there were protests against the presence of officers from a unit of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the security detail, and then the US vice-president, JD Vance, was booed during the opening ceremony.
On the Games’ first day, police in riot gear clashed with a small group of protesters after about 10,000 people took to the streets of Milan to protest about multiple issues, from the huge amount of public money spent on the event and its environmental impact, to housing costs and the precarious job market.
There were two suspected sabotage attacks on railway networks in the north, the first claimed by Italian anarchists who denounced the Olympics as “a glorification of nationalism”.
Keen to use the Games as a showcase for Italy and its own prowess, the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, rushed through a new security bill before the start of the event.
Meloni, who has celebrated Italy’s medals on social media and was among the crowd in Milan on Wednesday cheering the Italian women’s short track relay team as it won silver, condemned the protesters as “enemies” of the country.
Giovanni Orsina, a politics professor at Luiss University in Rome, said: “As always, there were flames of political controversy for three or four days at the beginning, but then everything stopped and the attention turned to the sport.”
The last time Italy hosted a Winter Olympics was in Turin in 2006. Those Games were credited for transforming the city, an hour or so south and west of Milan, from a grimy industrial hub into a vibrant destination for tourism and culture. But they also left a legacy of debt and abandoned sports venues.
Italy’s government hopes the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics will give the country a much-needed economic boost. The legacy of these Games is yet to transpire, but either way, “the impact will be positive”, said Orsina.
“I believe they will have such an impact that the spending will be justified,” he added. “Milan has a productive fabric, an administration that works and the capacity to make everything come to fruition … the same with the Lombardy region and other areas where the Olympics were held.”
