⛷️ The Olympics are back in my hometown - and I’m torn

🏠 Exactly 70 years ago, Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted the Winter Olympics. My grandparents - Argia and Piero - seized the opportunity, borrowed money from friends and family, and built Villa Belvedere.

🗺️ Nowadays, I run this family business together with my mother (yes, I have a life beyond CDR), and three generations live in this house. The Olympics put the beautiful Dolomites on the global map, and until today we all benefit from the boom that it brought.

Today, the Olympics are back in Cortina. This time, however, I am here to experience its impact in real time. And what emerges - a story heard time and time again for events like these - is a situation with many repercussions:

🪓 Thousands of beautiful old larch trees cut down to build a €100m+ bobsleigh track which will never be used again

🏗️ Tens of millions spent on temporary infrastructure which will be dismantled right after the event

⚠️ Mobility for locals heavily impacted, with thousands not able to get to work reliably

🏨 Hotels and guest houses empty, as the awaited tourist boom never materialised

📈 Foreign real estate speculation driving home prices to absurd levels (higher than central Manhattan) while residents cannot find affordable housing

👥 Tens of thousands of people flooding a village of 5,000 inhabitants

🏔️ Don’t get me wrong: as an outdoor and sports fan, this is a dream come true. I know that the images of the famous coloured circle against breathtaking snowcapped mountains will go around the world and help us attract tourists for the next 50 years.

🌍 But still, a sour taste remains. Is it worth the ecosystem damage and absurd emissions? Is it worth the pain for local residents, many of whom will in no way benefit from this spectacle? 

✈️ And then there is a deeper angle, which I cannot ignore given the work I do: winter tourism is mostly at odds with protecting the environment. It involves travelling and consuming. My family, like most in this valley, rely on it - but should we promote it to these levels?

🌨️ Especially in an area that is witnessing the impact of climate change first hand: glaciers long-gone, melting permafrost causing deadly avalanches, and natural snow ever more rare. 

🏅 During these Olympics, I’ll still watch and cheer, hopefully even in person. And I’ll probably still feel proud seeing Cortina on the global stage. But I believe we all share responsibility for questioning whether the way we host events like this still serves the future we claim to care about.

🏆 I think it’s time we became more honest about the true costs of these mega-events - a multi-country world cup is around the corner after all. 

💚 If we cannot host them without harming the places we love - destroying ecosystems, displacing locals, and wasting precious resources - then something in the model is fundamentally broken.

🤔 Curious how others think about this tension and trade off? I can’t be the only one torn.

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