226. Olympic Fever

I’ve always been a sucker for the Olympics. It’s probably the only occasion where hearing The Star Spangled Banner gives me goosebumps. I have to confess that I watched the documentary Miracle: The Boys of 80, about the 1980 gold medal US hockey team, and blubbered through the whole thing, as I did watching it live all those years ago.

So when it was announced in 2019 that the 2026 winter games, both Olympics and Paralympics, would be shared between Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites, I could barely wait.

Not only would the games themselves be fun, but I was looking forward to the scenes of Italy and the human interest stories that are always a feature of the tv coverage of the games.

I had previously been to the arenas being used in Milan and Verona, but not Cortina, where alpine, bobsled, skeleton, luge, and curling, the sport Americans love to mock, will be taking place.

My mother always spoke of Cortina, which also hosted the 1956 Olympics, as the height of elegance, so I was eager to see it, both for its own sake and to enhance the experience of watching the games later on. So when we headed to the Dolomites in 2024, we made sure to make a stop in Cortina.

Even though the Olympics were still two years away, you could tell that the town was frantically trying to get ready. The roads were all torn up and construction cranes were everywhere, with the hotels being rebuilt nearly from scratch. (The only place we could find to spend the night was a fifth floor attic walk-up so cramped that I kept banging my head on the ceiling. I am sure that room is getting top euro this week.)

And yes, it was elegant, but in the interchangable way all high-end resorts are, with shops like Gucci, Prada, and Moncler. We made the mistake of having a macchiato at an outdoor caffe that cost $18 each. We know not to frequent a place overlooking the Coliseum or Saint Mark’s Square, but we were caught off-guard on a quiet, gray morning in the off-season.

Then I got a brainstorm: wouldn’t it be fun to actually volunteer at the games? Surely there was a need for thousands of people to usher and hand out stuff and point people in the right direction. I found the official website, and sure enough, there was a volunteer application, which I quickly filled out and submitted, emphasizing my love of the Olympics and Paralympics, and my love for Italy.

My dear friend Maureen is also, if anything, a bigger Olympics fan than I am. She actually drove down to Atlanta with her family for the 1996 Olympics, and bought tickets to the 2008 games in Beijing, which ultimately, she was not able to attend. I suggested that she apply to volunteer, too. Wouldn’t that be fun to do it together? We amused ourselves thinking of the puzzlement of the Italian organizers at receiving applications from two elderly women born ten days apart in Fall River, MA, perhaps jumping to the conclusion that Fall River was a hotbed of Olympic fever.

Well, it turns out they got 100,000 applications for 10,000 slots. Maureen got an interview and was named an alternate. I got nothing. And truth be told, it is probably better this way. I can’t imagine what the cost would have been; volunteers were required to commit to all ten days, and I see that the average room is going for $500/night. And of course, we will see much more on our curated American tv coverage. What if we had been assigned to the curling pavilion the whole time?

So all’s well that ends well. But wouldn’t it have been a great adventure?