Not ideal, but I deal

Milano-Cortina marked my third Olympic Opening Ceremony, following Beijing back in 2022 and Paris in 2024. Out of all of that, I am not sure I thought that Beijing would still rank at the top of the list all these years later, but after last night, it still does.

The biggest issue with Beijing was that it was very cold. Credit to the organizers, they left gloves and hats for all the media members in the press seats, which was a great touch and greatly appreciated, even if I had a hat and gloves already. But we got in and out of there relatively easily (there were really no spectators, so that helped).

Paris had a grand idea of having the parade on the river and in many ways that was great. It allowed more people to see the athletes as they floated down the river. The problem, at least from the media standpoint, was that they had us in certain zones and there was absolutely no protection from the rain and there was no place to plug in any laptops or phones. When the ceremony ended, we were supposed to take public transportation back to the hotel or media center, but my phone was dead, which was how we got on and off the metro system. So, soaking wet with no guidance from technology, I had to make my way back to the media center and it was not a short walk and it was still raining. It was a tough ending to what should have been a great day.

And then there was last night. 

It started well enough, with a quick bus ride from the media center to San Siro Stadium and a relatively quick check through security, as I mentioned in my blog post yesterday. I had a non-tabled seat, so it wasn't exactly a comfortable experience, but that was pretty much what I expected in that regard. Then came the parade of athletes. Usually this is a highlight, although a relatively long process. But because the athletes are spread so far apart, they were in four different locations. So the first four or five nations that were announced, including Greece, had no athletes marching into the stadium, just their sign. On the screen (which was way too small for the size of the stadium), we could see the athletes walking in at other locations, but the only way I could read where they were was through the lens on my camera. It was just kind of lackluster. 

And then the flame came into the stadium for what is also usually a highlight, but there was no cauldron at the stadium, so the flame came in, changed hands and left the stadium. Eventually we watched on the screen as the cauldron was lit in both Milan (loved that it was Alberto Tomba) and Cortina (and really loved that it was Sofia Goggia). But without my zoom lens on my camera, I probably wouldn't have known who it was. 

The other small issue was that trying to have people speaking in Cortina heard in Milan didn't exactly work. The Italian President went to open the Games and his speech in Cortina was drowned out in Milan by people cheering for him, so it wasn't exactly easy to hear.

But then it was time to leave. 

The transport app that we use told me that I could leave the stadium and walk to the subway stop about half a mile down the road and take two subways to get me back to the hotel. So along with tons of other people, I walked in that direction only to find the subway station closed. And so was the next one. The app had said two different stations would be closed, but not those two. And to add to that, after walking all the way back to the media center to get the subway, the bus that runs from the train station in the vicinity of my hotel was not running at 2 a.m., so I ended up calling an Uber to get me back to the hotel.

All that being said, I will still always take the chance to get to the Opening Ceremony or the Closing Ceremony. Every one will be different and that's the joy of it. But maybe next time, I'll just stay overnight in the stadium.

San Siro Stadium hosted the Opening Ceremony for the Milano-Cortina Olympics, or at least some of it.