Source : ABC NEWS
The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are over.
The memories for the athletes, visitors and volunteers will last a lifetime.
The challenge is ensuring that any negative effects on the locals and the environment will not.
The Games have shone a spotlight on a number of small alpine communities that would never normally be in the spotlight, other than in holiday brochures or in a blur as the Giro d’Italia races through.
No doubt, the commercial value of exposure to an audience of millions is incalculable.
Bookings for ski trips from across Europe will undoubtedly be flooding in.
But with increased interest comes more pressure on the small towns and villages — pressure that the Games will exert just by being there.
So what is the right balance between winter sport being the economic lifeblood of many of these small alpine communities versus the overall environmental impact of mega events?
The Olympics will always attract crowds. (Getty Images: David Ramos)
“If you push the concept of an event to its smallest denominator, say a family reunion, it’s an event,” Christophe Dubi, executive director of the Olympic Games, tells ABC Sport in an exclusive interview.
“Every time you gather, every time you create an event, you create movement … that concentration is bound to create more emissions than if we all stay home.
“Imagine the Chinese New Year when everybody moves around. Or Thanksgiving in the US where everybody goes back to their families.
“So yes, every time you have an event, you’re bound to create more emissions than if we stay home.”
The Olympic Games, of course, is an enormous event.
Nearly 3,000 athletes travelled from all over the world to compete in northern Italy this past fortnight.
The organising committee said it sold more than 1.3 million tickets.
A total of 19,000 spectators can attend the Anterselva Biathlon Arena. (Getty Images: Alexander Hassenstein)
All of those spectators needed to travel. All needed somewhere to stay. To eat. To drink.
The carbon footprint of a mega event like this quickly becomes enormous, which is why Dubi says there has to be close communication with local organisers and the community.
“Now, for the Olympics … this is where we really need to work with the organisers,” he says.
“I know sometimes they are questioning, ‘But do we have to push the cursor everywhere to the max?’ [The answer is] yes, there is no other way.
“These are the Olympics. You’re going to be under the microscope and we have to do what is right in every walk of life, because this is what the Games are about.
“It’s every walk of life, from culture to technology, finance and sustainability.”
Christophe Dubi is the Olympic Games executive director. (Getty Images: Maja Hitij)
Nevertheless, hosting a major event such as the Olympic Games is always going to have an enormous impact environmentally.
Australia’s success has been centred around the gorgeous valley of Livigno, which has hosted the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events across two venues, the Snow Park and the Moguls and Aerials Park at either end of town.
“I think that, with what we have, it’s really ideal for the event,” Dubi says.
“I was always very interested by Livigno and their concept on the Snow Park. I think it’s the most amazing venue ever in the Winter Games.
“You have five fields of play [big air, slopestyle, parallel giant slalom, halfpipe and cross] that you can see from one vantage point. I think it’s incredibly novel. Truly well done.”
The Livigno Snow Park has five venues combined into one super venue. (Getty Images: Adam Pretty)
During the off-season, just 7,000 people call this idyllic valley home, but that number swells to more than 30,000 during the peak winter season.
The impact of hosting will most widely be felt in this fairytale valley, but Dubi says he hopes they have struck the right balance between hosting events and minimising disruption, mainly by spreading things so far apart and limiting what each venue hosts.
“I think it’s a little treasure, this region,” Dubi says.
“It’s close to national parks, both in Italy and Switzerland … that little valley of Livigno is indeed very special.”
Having the Olympics so widely spread, over four distinct centres, was always going to be a challenge.
Getting from one to another proved to be desperately difficult.
Four hours minimum from Milan to Livigno. Six hours from Livigno to Cortina — all assuming the transport connections are on time.
But there are no direct transfers between clusters either.
Moving between them was not a priority or even encouraged at all.
“There is always that debate, when you create distance, you create emissions, but using the train, buses, and minimal number of cars …” Dubi says.
“You don’t need to add pressure to what are very small roads.
“The Foscanio Pass on one side and the tunnel with Switzerland on the other are really tiny.
“I think that’s the way you avoid having massive crowds.
“One thing that people have to understand is doing business in the Alps [compared to] Utah, in Korea, or China, it is radically different.
“The model we have here is a model for the Alps — we have little roads and we have little trains and very little capacity, so we have to work with that terrain and those infrastructures.”
In the lead-up to the Paris Olympics, organisers had trumpeted that the Games would be “climate positive”, although that changed to “climate neutral” before they quietly stopped talking about it at all.
That being said, there were visible and not-so-visible efforts made by the organising committee.
They included sourcing local ingredients for food in venues to reduce transport impacts, making use of renewable energy in all venues, and using recycled plastic for the seats in the new aquatics centre, which was one of the very few new venues built for the Games.
As a result, the Paris Olympics, featuring more than 10,500 athletes and 9.5 million tickets sold, produced 54 per cent fewer carbon emissions than previous Games in Rio (2016) and London (2012).
The Paris Olympics used a plethora of temporary venues. (Getty Images: Michael Reaves)
Despite all that, Madeleine Orr, author of Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport, said, “There is no version of a sustainable Games as of yet,” and complete carbon neutrality was some way off.
Dubi did not dispute this, but said Paris achieved the gold standard for what should be expected from future Games, including Brisbane 2032.
“I don’t know what completely neutral means, I am not technically savvy enough in this area to tell you, because even the organisations we’re working on over time have evolved in their advice to how we should measure carbon neutrality,” Dubi said.
“Paris did not lower their standard, they have definitely changed the language and how they explain what they’ve done, but they have at no point in time lowered their standard. Not at all.
Athletes will travel to Australia for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)
“Now … the conditions that you have in Australia, where you will have to fly in from outside, is it something that we would ask for the travellers to compensate? Is it the responsibility of the host? Where does the responsibility lie? Is it with the individuals or is it with the organiser?”
Dubi said the IOC “cannot shy away from our responsibility”.
“As the Games are concerned, we have to do the right things. There is no other way,” he said.
“We are too value-based for any of these societal demands for the Games to ignore them. That’s not doable at all. It’s not a choice.
“By not doing the right things when you are at the Olympic Games, you would become irrelevant.
“In any area, the expectations are to push the cursor, and this is where you are for the Olympic Games. And that’s how you maintain relevance.”
