Financial feasibility

The ramp up to Milan-Cortina is getting pretty real and over the last couple of days it became even more real in a pretty big way.

Shortly after I was approved for credentials, I had to submit my request for accommodations in Italy. As has been the case normally when I look for the housing, I am looking exclusively at the price. The money for these trips mostly comes out of my own pocket so I am looking for ways to keep the costs down as much as possible.

For Milan-Cortina, I also had to take into account the location for the housing, as the way the venues are spread out over the mountain villages of Italy, it is impossible to stay in one place and see the entire Olympics like I have in years past. I've always loved having the ability to move from location to location and see so many different things but it became very obvious once the venue master plan was released that it would not be possible in this version of the Olympics. It was disappointing, but understandable.

So, when I made my accommodation requests to the Milan-Cortina committee, I put in requests for a couple of nights in Milan at the start and the end of the Olympics with the hope of seeing some of the events in the city before making the move up into the mountains for the majority of the Games. Because I anticipate having at least one, if not more, biathletes from the local community, I chose the area of Anterselva near the biathlon venue. One of the issues here is that there are fewer choices in the accommodation lists in that area.

Over the weekend I received the accommodation allocation that the Milan-Cortina committee chose for me and it was a bit of sticker shock. I didn't get my first choices for the accommodation in either location and the places that they chose for me are not cheap. The overall bill for the three weeks looks like it will be around $6,000, which is double the price of my most expensive accommodations to date over the last five Olympics. That was a pretty big surprise and one that made me question my choice to even go.

That being said, I'm going. But I am going to have to find a few ways to figure out how to put more money into my Olympic account. As of right now, I have enough to cover the accommodations, but wouldn't have anything for the flight. The good news is, we only have to pay half of the accommodations in the next few months and the other half near the end of the year so I have some time to put away some of that money.

But damn, that was a bit of a shock.


This was the view from my very first Olympic accommodations, near the Black Sea in Sochi, Russia. I anticipate my view in the mountains of Italy will be much different.

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