Milan Cortina 2026: Italy Fly

From Brignone to Vittozzi, from Lollobrigida to Fontana: the Dolomites have decided to host half a world podium. The rest is history. The two-seater paraglider is the future. (We swear.)
February 17, 2026 – written somewhere between an avalanche of golds and a thermal above Cortina.
There are times in sports history when an entire nation stops doing what it was doing. He gets up from the sofa, abandons the pizza halfway, pauses the Match on Hinge and, with that typically Italian Olympic calm masking an excitement bordering on clinically manageable, says softly: “But we’re very strong”.

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics-which began on February 6 with an opening ceremony that made the world realize that Italians can’t do things halfway-will close on February 22. There are still five days to go. Yet Italy has already done what seemed written only in the fantasies of a few particularly optimistic fans: they shattered their all-time medal record in a single winter edition, surpassing 23 (compared to 20 in Lillehammer 1994), with eight gold medals and a somewhat knee-shaking medal position-second overall, behind only Norway. In front of the United States of America. Yes, you read that right. In front of the United States.

With talent, sweat, gritted teeth, tears of joy and – we are increasingly convinced of this – with the discreet but decisive help of the Dolomites.
The Catalogue of Blue Wonders
Let’s start from the beginning, or rather: from February 7th, day one of Italian Olympic glory.

On the legendary Stelvio slope in Bormio, one of the most challenging and respected downhill courses on the world circuit, something was staged that no one would have expected with that naturalness: an Italian double. Giovanni Franzoni, born in 2001, making his Olympic debut, snatched silver with a goosebump-inducing descent, “literally sending the thousands of fans who flocked to the Stelvio into ecstasy,” as his Eurosport colleagues wrote. The bronze instead went to veteran Dominik Paris, a man from Bormio like few others, someone who practically lives on that track. An Italian double in the men’s downhill. The first since the post-war period. Not bad as a week opener.

Same day, same euphoria, different disciplines: Francesca Lollobrigida won the first Italian gold medal of these Games in speed skating in the 3000 meters. Then, five days later, he repeated the feat in the 5000 meters, also setting an Olympic record. Two individual golds. Returning from maternity leave. In a season defined as “troubled” by those who followed it. She became the sixth woman in history to win the 3000-5000 double in a single Olympic edition. Someone should investigate if Mom’s baked pasta isn’t hiding some WADA-prohibited substance.

The mixed relay team of Arianna Fontana, Elisa Confortola, Thomas Nadalini, and Pietro Sighel (with Chiara Betti and Luca Spechenhauser supporting) presented an “unexpected gold medal, given this season’s international results, but for this reason even more wonderful.” Sighel’s celebration, iconic and borderline disrespectful towards his opponents, has already become one of the most shared Olympic frames on social media. Also on February 10, Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner added bronze in mixed doubles curling – confirming that the duo she had already enchanted at Beijing 2022 was not a flash in the pan but a force of nature with a handle and brush.

February 11th was women’s luge day: Andrea Voetter and Marion Oberhofer won gold in the women’s doubles on the Eugenio Monti track in Cortina, one of those facilities that smells of Olympic history and wood resin. On February 12th he won bronze in the team luge relay, with a team (Hofer, Rieder, Kainzwaldner, Fischnaller, Voetter and Oberhofer) that now knows the Cortina track inch by inch.

12 February it’s also the day when every Italian citizen, according to Eurosport, “has the obligation to circle in red on the calendar”: because Federica Brignone won the Super-G, giving away the Italian team’s number five gold medal. If that weren’t enough, on February 15th she repeated her feat in the giant slalom, becoming the first Italian skier-and the second Italian overall after Alberto Tomba-to win two gold medals at the same Olympic edition. Tomba did it in Calgary in 1988. Brignone did it at home, at 35, in those Dolomites that he climbed and descended thousands of times in his life. If there is such a thing as sporting perfection, this is a good nomination.

On February 13, Michela Moioli won bronze in snowboard cross, followed on February 15 by silver in team mixed cross with Lorenzo Sommariva: “Yet another comeback show of her career,” Eurosport wrote, “to burn Léa Casta to the finish line.” Also on February 15, the men’s cross-country skiing relay (Barp, Carollo, Graz and Pellegrino) won bronze. And then, on top of everything, to close out that Sunday’s poker of medals and write a page in the history of Italian biathlon: Lisa Vittozzi.

The biathlon Mona Lisa – as they nicknamed her – won gold in the women’s 10km pursuit in Anterselva. The first Olympic gold medal in Italian biathlon history. Never before has the Italian title risen so high in this sport. Vittozzi fired twenty shots. It hit twenty out of twenty. Zero errors. A race that, if you tell it to someone who doesn’t know it, sounds like legend, not sports news.

The picture is completed with other precious podiums: the bronze in the figure skating team event (Guignard, Fabbri, Conti, Macii, Gutmann, Grassl and Rizzo), the bronze of Fischnaller in the men’s luge singles, that of Sofia Goggia in the women’s downhill (with which she completes a personal collection of gold, silver and bronze in three different Olympic editions – the perfect trilogy), Lorello’s bronze in the men’s 5000 speed skating, Dalmasso’s in the women’s PGS snowboarding, and the mixed biathlon relay (silver, not bronze, to be precise – and we apologize to the protagonists for the approximation).
Twenty-three medals. Eight golds. Absolute record. And five more days of racing.

The Dolomites: Not Simple Mountains, But the Geometric Center of the Universe
Allow us a parenthesis. A declaration of love, more than geographical.
The Dolomites are not a backdrop. They are not simply the most photographed landscape in Europe (although they are, with all due respect to the Swiss Alps, the Scottish Highlands and whatever other pretenders). The Dolomites are an operating system. They are the limestone and dolomite version of what Italians are: vertical, unpredictable, spectacular, with a tendency to do things big and be incomprehensibly elegant even in the most extreme situations.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009, the Dolomites stretch between Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia with a landscape arrogance bordering on premeditation. The Three Peaks of Lavaredo, the Sella Group, the Marmolada, the Red Croda: names that sound like spells. And indeed, looking at those eight thousand years of geology compressed into vertical walls that veer from ochre to fiery red at sunset, it’s natural to think that someone up there wants Italy to win.

Cortina d’Ampezzo-the Queen of the Dolomites, as she’s known, with her modesty all of Ampezzo-hosted alpine skiing, luge, and skeleton races on the renovated Eugenio Monti slope, which hosted the 1956 edition. That same track that seventy years ago saw Eugenio Monti, the “Flying Red”, conquer the legend. Today he saw new heroes descend at speeds the human body technically shouldn’t have to endure, while the surrounding Dolomites served as a breathtaking theatrical backdrop.

Anterselva has written the chapters of biathlon. A silent, ghostly basin at 1,600 meters above sea level, in the heart of South Tyrol, where the sound of gunfire echoes through the larches and the silence that follows is more eloquent than any comment. This is where Vittozzi made history. And that’s right: certain stories are only written in certain places.
Bormio with Stelvio, Predazzo and Tesero in the cross-country, Livigno and Milan for some indoor disciplines: a design that covers Northern Italy like an Olympic constellation. But it is the Dolomites that are the beating heart. The place where physics meets poetry and where Italian athletes seem to receive an inexplicable upgrade, like those smartphones that always work better in the mountains because they get more signal.

There is something almost mystical about the fact that the most beautiful places on the planet coincide with those where Italians win the most. It’s probably thanks to the air. Or polenta. Or both.

And Now, The Serious Proposal (We Assume No Responsibility for What Follows)
Are you still with us? Well. Because we get to the most important part of the article.

With all this Italian success. With the Dolomites at the centre of the global sporting world. With the Azzurri winning on ice, snow, slopes and trampolines in a variety of sports that would be the envy of any specialized nation. With Cortina returning to being the winter sports capital of the world after seventy years. In this cosmically favorable context, there is a question that hovers in the crystalline air of these valleys like a spring thermal, like a crow gliding over reddish cradles:

Stop for a second. Breathe. Reread it.
Yes, the two-seater paraglider. The one with the instructor and the passenger. The one where one knows what he is doing and the other does not, and this information asymmetry is, philosophically speaking, the most authentic representation of the relationship between the Olympic athlete and the television audience.

Think about it seriously – or at least try, we tried for twenty minutes and concluded that the proposal makes sense. You are on the Alpe di Siusi, the largest high-altitude grassy surface in Europe, before the Sciliar who watches you from above with the solemnity of a very senior referee. The sun rises over the Odle and paints them a shade of pink that exists nowhere else in the world. The instructor fastens the harness to it with the same solemnity as a priest officiating a thousand-year rite. He looks you in the eye. He says, “Ready?”
You nod. Not because you’re ready. But because it’s too late to go back, and the family cameraman has already started filming.
And then – whoooosh – take off. The Dolomites open beneath you like the biggest IMAX screen you’ve ever seen. The wind is cold and clean. The paraglider turns gently to the left, then to the right. The instructor says, “Magnificent, right?” with that calm of someone who does this every day and doesn’t understand why the passenger is making sounds that in nature are only produced by animals fleeing predators.
This is the two-seater paraglider. And we wholeheartedly argue that he deserves a spot at the Winter Olympics. Maybe starting from Milan Cortina, while we’re at it.
The competition categories could be multiple and all legitimate:

The “Landing Accuracy” is the most obvious: whoever centers the circle drawn on the lawn wins. Simple, universal, measurable. The IOC loves measurable things – that’s why they included curling, where you measure the distance of a granite stone from a target painted on ice, with a broom. If it works with the broom, it works with the paraglider.

“Elegance in Flight” is the artistic category: jury of nine international judges, scores from 0 to 10, background music chosen by the athlete-instructor. Like figure skating, but with a minimum altitude of five hundred meters and a significantly superior panorama. Italy, having the Dolomites as their training headquarters, would enjoy a competitive advantage that is difficult to quantify but impossible to deny.

“Instructor Emotional Resistance” is probably the most technical discipline: the instructor is assessed for his or her ability to maintain concentration and flight control while the passenger screams, begs for a return to the ground, clings to the harness like a koala to a eucalyptus, and asks questions like “Are we sure we’re okay?” every four seconds. Those who hold up the most without laughing take technical bonuses. Arianna Fontana’s experience with Olympic pressures would likely be transferable to this discipline.

The “Panoramic Freestyle” is the reina category: acrobatics above the Dolomites with a soundscape by Ennio Morricone. Spirals, loops, shadow delta wing. Final vote given half by the technical jury and half by an aerial photograph taken during the flight: whoever looks most beautiful from above wins. Gold medal awarded to Italy automatically for landscape, aesthetic and decency reasons towards UNESCO natural heritage.

We already know what he’s thinking. You’re thinking that the IOC reasons with geological times – and you’re right, the Dolomites also formed in geological times, but the result is there for all to see. We also know that the road to becoming an Olympic discipline is long, winding, and involves international federal recognition, trial periods, and universality tests. The same process that led curling-a 16th-century Scottish game in which a granite stone is pushed onto ice polished with brooms-to become an Olympic sport.

If the curling did it, the two-seater paraglider deserves at least an audition.
The proposal is formally on the table. The dossier is in preparation. The Dolomites, as always, are waiting. With that patience that only things that have lasted two hundred million years have.

Milan Cortina 2026 will make history not only as the third Italian winter edition after Cortina 1956 and Turin 2006. Not just like the record record – record for total medals, record for golds, record for athletes called up (196, never so many). It will go down in history as the one in which Italy reminded itself, and the entire world, that it is a nation capable of great things when it plays at home, when the mountains are the same as always, when the audience sings in the stands and the country stops in front of the screens.

Six of the eight gold medals won so far have been won by women. Brignone, Lollobrigida, Voetter and Oberhofer, Vittozzi: champions who have transformed these two weeks into a lesson in female excellence that goes far beyond sport. They are daughters of the Dolomites, of that mountain culture that does not forgive superficiality and rewards those who know how to suffer, wait, and then explode at the right time.

There are still five days to go. More races to go, more podiums possible, more names to add to this extraordinary story. But the message has already arrived, as clear as the January air at three thousand meters: Italy is alive, it is strong, and in its mountains it knows how to do things that the rest of the world can only gawk at.
As for the Olympic two-seater paraglider? See you again in Los Angeles 2028. In the meantime, bring the harness. You never know.
Article published on February 17, 2026 – Data updated to the latest available races
The medals are real. The enthusiasm is certified. The proposal on paragliding is a serious one. Or almost.