‘Very Long Way to Go’ at Turin

In an Olympic case of deja vu, preparations for the 2006 Winter Games have been inconsistent, even halting, just as they were before the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.

Here in the northwestern corner of Italy, in and around the city Italians call Torino, Games-related construction isn’t done and won’t be for months. The Olympic transport system promises to be a challenge. There aren’t enough hotel rooms. The budgets are a work in progress. Operational capabilities remain uncertain and the leadership of the organizing committee may yet be in flux.

Athens was bedeviled by construction woes and other issues, but it all somehow came together at the last instant. Olympic and governmental officials remain guardedly optimistic -- but far from certain -- it will in Turin too in time for the Feb. 10, 2006, opening ceremony.

“We are 13 months out and we have a very long way to go,” said Jean-Claude Killy, the legendary Olympic skier who, as a veteran member of the International Olympic Committee, is supervising preparations for the 2006 Games.

“I think they will be ready two minutes before the Games. At that time, it will all fall into place.”

In Italian, the word that describes the approach to the organized chaos enveloping Games preparation is sereno. It means a quiet certitude that things will work out.

It’s the word Valentino Castellani, the head of the Torino 2006 organizing committee, uses to describe his state of mind. “I’m at peace with myself,” he says.

It’s the attitude that explains how Mario Pescante, a longtime IOC member and Italian culture ministry under-secretary overseeing sport, can say all the Games facilities were done even as crews work on the bobsled course that was moved because of asbestos at the previous site.

“It is one year before the Games. This is an Olympic record,” Pescante said. “Mediterranean peoples usually solve the problems in the last days or last hours.

“We are very proud. It is one year before the Games and the sport facilities are ready.”

Olympic Stadium -- still called Stadio Comunale, originally Stadio Mussolini when it was built in the 1930s -- needs months of repair. It’s due to be done this summer.

Next door is the 12,250-seat hockey arena. It’s supposed to be built by September.

A couple of miles away, on the site of an old market, the main Olympic village is taking shape under a flock of building cranes. It’s also due to be done this summer, as is the speedskating oval a few hundred yards away.

Not to worry, say Italian officials.

In another neighborhood, the 8,250-seat indoor arena that will be used for figure skating and short-track speedskating is done, 15 months after construction began. It sits under a sail-like roof originally built in 1961 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Italy’s unification.

The arena will serve as the stage for the European figure-skating championships beginning Jan. 25, a major organizational test for Turin 2006 organizers.

On New Year’s Eve, crews stayed up late, making snow for ski jumping on the biggest jumping hill in the history of the Games.

The facility, in a remote Alpine village called Pragelato, will be the site of a World Cup event Feb. 11 and 12, another test for 2006 organizers.

Last week, crews put down the last 30 feet of ice on the bobsled course in advance of bobsled and skeleton events later this month and luge events in February.

U.S. luge racers Brian Martin of Palo Alto and Mark Grimmette of Muskegon, Mich., silver-medal winners in Salt Lake City in 2002, tested the track over the weekend.

“It was very much a construction zone,” Grimmette said. “There was no infrastructure whatsoever for the start houses, for roads, whatever. The roads were just graded by heavy machinery. They were muddy.”

However, said U.S. Coach Wolfgang Schaedler, “the track itself was actually done very nicely.”

Still, athletes, officials and fans have to get there, and the logistics of the 2006 Games remain a major concern -- besides security issues that, after the Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks, figure prominently now in any Olympic planning.

Turin -- which sought the Games in part to create an identity that would put it onto the tourist circuit with Florence and Venice -- remains chronically short of hotel beds. Killy estimated 2,000 rooms remain to be found. Where remains unclear.

Then too, the 2006 Games will essentially be two distinct Games -- skating in Turin itself but skiing, snowboarding and the sliding events in the distant mountains.

The mountain venues are scattered across two valleys. The Valle di Susa is reachable from Turin by major highway, making snowboarding, for instance, a comparatively easy destination, about an hour from town. The other, the Val Chisone, is reachable only by a winding, two-lane road.

To make the traffic counts work, organizers have opted to scale back attendance at locales such as ski jumping and cross-country skiing. There will be only 7,500 viewing spots available on a given day at ski jumping; 18,100 fans crowded the venue at the Salt Lake City Games.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on transport,” Emilio Pozzi, an operations guru who is a veteran of such other major events as the 1999 women’s soccer World Cup in the United States, said while overseeing work at the cross-country course. “Are we confident? We’re pretty sure.”

Down in the city, meanwhile, Castellani, Pescante and other officials say they are also pretty sure that the organizing committee’s budget crisis will shortly be resolved -- with the Italian government kicking in about $200 million to cover shortfalls.

A few weeks ago, Pescante was appointed the government’s special liaison to the Games. The move underscored a trend toward strong federal government oversight of recent non-U.S. editions of the Games, as in Athens and Sydney in 2000.

At word of Pescante’s involvement, Castellani floated his resignation -- then withdrew it.

Asked who is now in charge, Castellani said, “If something doesn’t work, it’s me.”

Pescante, meantime, brought on board Luciano Barra, an experienced Italian sports official who is well regarded in Olympic circles. In a 15-minute interview, Pescante didn’t mention Castellani.

Pescante said he’d agreed to the 2006 Games role only after IOC President Jacques Rogge and Luca di Montezemolo, the chairman of Fiat, long Turin’s most important company and thus the most important business figure in the area, implored him to do so.

Before his 2001 election as IOC president, Rogge headed the regional association European Olympic Committees. Pescante was his secretary-general and now heads the organization.

Asked who is in charge of the Turin Games, Pescante said, “I don’t know if this leadership can work during the Olympic Games. But we have time to find out.”