🔗 Share this article

Forget about poor conditions. For now, there’s no ice.

With NHL athletes gearing up to make a comeback to the Olympic Games for the initial occasion in over a decade, building work on the primary hockey venue for the Milan-Cortina Games is cutting it close.

Local organizers confirmed on Wednesday that the primary trial competition for the 16,000-capacity Santagiulia arena that was scheduled for December has been moved to a smaller venue – and that no additional trial has been arranged yet.

This situation raises the prospect that there might not be a game held in the primary venue until the puck is dropped for the women's initial games at the Olympics on 5 February – 24 hours before the inaugural event.

“The timeline will be extremely tight to the beginning of the games, the schedule is highly compressed. However, we were aware,” Milano Cortina local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier stated recently.

The competition that was intended to evaluate the Santagiulia playing surface was a segment of the U20 world championship from 8-14 December. This tournament has been transferred to the Rho Fair hockey venue, which is being set up inside a massive convention center on the outskirts of Milan and will stage lesser games during the games.

Usually, freshly built Olympic facilities are tested at least the year before to holding medal events. And with a large hockey arena, it’s not just about the playing surface and making sure that the playing surface is ready and secure. It’s also about checking concession stands, bathrooms and everything else inside a newly constructed modern arena.

The Santagiulia venue, which is being constructed by a private company, is scheduled to become Italy’s largest covered stadium. Following the Olympics, it’s being considered as a possible future host of the ATP Tour Finals tennis tournament.

Despite the postponements and concerns, expensive passes are already being sold for events at the Santagiulia venue. Tickets for the men's championship final on 22 February – the closing day of the games – are priced at as much as €1,400 (more than $1,600). That’s more than for any other athletic competition at the Milan-Cortina Games. Only tickets for the inaugural and final events are priced higher.

The comeback of NHL players at the Olympics was announced in February of last year, with the world’s top hockey league allowing its athletes to compete in the Winter Olympics for the first time since 2014 in Sochi.

Men's Olympic hockey competition is set to take place from 11-22 February. Women's event runs from 5-19 February.