Ruth Sherlock

Cortina is this traditionally tiny town, this jewel in the beautiful Dolomites, this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

When I was there, I counted about 20 cranes for different construction projects, so it will have an impact.

Organisers had tried to say, you know, that they were going to try to use existing sporting equipment, existing arenas, existing sporting spaces so that they don't have to rebuild them.

And that is the case.

Actually, they've managed to kind of use existing structures in most cases.

you know, one of the most controversial points is about the bobsleigh track in Cortina.

There was hopes initially that they would use the bobsleigh track in Innsbruck in nearby Austria.

But Matteo Salvini, Italy's deputy prime minister, he intervened and said, no, it's a point of national pride that we have this sport in Italy.

And so they had to kind of completely redo the bobsleigh track in Cortina.

And that resulted in hundreds of larch trees being cut down from this

old growth forest and it now dominates the landscape and you know some of these infrastructure projects actually won't be finished for the games they were approved as part of a sort of local development and it's going to go on for years it involves new roads and even tunnels through the mountainside

You know, that is certainly the hope to kind of drive more economic development in these rural areas.

But, you know, I spoke with a local councillor who's the head of the opposition area.

in the local council there.

And she said many, many people don't want this development because they worry it's going to transform this pristine rural landscape.

In fact, she said the Olympics in 1956, the last time they were held in Cortina,

The climatic conditions were right.

They even had one of the ice skating events on a frozen over lake.

But here we are having to kind of try to recreate the conditions with artificial snow.

And then also back then there was room for development, for people to come to Cortina.