Winter Olympics 2026 LIVE: Milano Cortina Games come to an end with closing ceremony in Verona

In sporting terms, Italy took on an Olympic challenge with a high degree of difficulty. The nation hosted a Winter Games scattered over several venues, headed by Milan and Cortina, but with high-calibre events in other mountain towns, such as Livigno, where Australia reaped an unprecedented six medals.

There were doubters – could Italy pull off this quadruple pike?

The ice hockey stadium was hastily finished, just before the Games, there were protests and concerns about the whole concept of spreading Olympics across northern Italy.

Well, Italy did pull it off.

The Winter Games did not suffer for decentralisation. Rather, the diversity of venues added to the allure, to the drama, the most compelling of which occurred early: American Lindsey Vonn’s horrific crash in her attempted comeback.

There were scandals, weird moments – such as a confession of infidelity by a Norwegian skier – and daily sporting dramas, culminating in USA’s ice hockey upset of Canada in the final hours of competition.

But as the Games moved to Verona, one wondered, after breaking records for audience and averting the calamities that some had predicted, there was one final question – could Milan-Cortina stick the landing?

The closing in Verona was a lower key event, and the most spectacular aspect of the ceremony was the venue – the ancient Verona Stadium, built in ancient Roman times and preserved enough to host a smaller scale ending.

The Games didn’t botch the landing, but nor was it perfect.

It was a much less ambitious and entertaining event than the epic opening ceremony, before 60,000 plus at Milan’s San Siro Stadium, which had spectacular, high-scale operatic performances, dancing and a potent, perhaps pointed, speech from actress Charlize Theron, who quoted her nation’s president Nelson Mandela and called for world peace.

The Australian flag bearers, medallists Danielle Scott (silver) and Cooper Woods (gold), had a police escort to assist their passage from Livigno to Verona’s stadium.

There were, of course, operatic performances (nods to La Traviata and Madame Butterfly) some staged in another venue and beamed in – ballet from a local troupe, and the catchy Eiffel 65 by Gabry Ponte.

It did not have the star pose of Paris 2024, replete with celebrities such as Tom Cruise, or Snoop Dogg, who’d been at the Games as an ambassador for Team USA.

One highlight – and there weren’t many – was the rendition of a classic Italian song by Joan Thiel of Il mondo (The World) by Jimmy Fontana.

The audiences spent much of their time standing as the national anthems of Italy, Greece (original Olympians), France (slow version) were performed, plus Sweden and Norway’s for belated medal presentations for the men’s and women’s 50km classic cross country skiing.

It ended with the formality of speeches, of thanks to all who’d participated, by the organisers and Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president.

It was a subdued end to a superb Winter Games, in all.

Italy, as it turned out, had done enough that the closing wasn’t so important.