Preparations for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina have been bumpy. A delayed and problem-plagued ice rink and a contentious bobsleigh track have renewed familiar worries about schedules slipping and costs ballooning — a pattern long associated with the Winter Games. Some observers fear 2026 could be a tipping point for how nations view hosting large sporting events.
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies the fiscal effects of major sports events, is blunt about the failures. He says delays at a multipurpose arena are “inexcusable,” and argues that cities without suitable existing venues probably shouldn’t bid at all. His bigger concern is the risk that expensive, bespoke Olympic facilities become “white elephants” that sit unused after the crowds leave.
The official budget for Milan-Cortina is north of $3.5 billion (€3 billion). Organizers and analysts point to a possible boost from tourism and infrastructure of roughly €5 billion, but those figures remain speculative. Meanwhile, local residents repeatedly express a simple complaint: the Games are entertaining, but they don’t want to be left footing a long-term bill for what amounts to someone else’s party.
The IOC, structured as a non-profit, redistributes most Olympic revenue back into sport and athlete development and offered about $925 million to Milan-Cortina — slightly less than the $970 million given to Beijing in 2022. Still, Matheson stresses a blunt reality: the IOC largely lacks the cash to stage events on its own. “It only has the history and the property rights to its name and the rings,” he says, so it relies on committed hosts to build venues and operate the Games.
Where responsibility lies is contested. Matheson places much of the blame for the current hiccups on the local organizing committee rather than the IOC, and he points to moments when the IOC tried to reduce costs — for example suggesting sliding events be held in Switzerland instead of constructing a new track in Cortina. That option was reportedly rejected, perhaps out of pride, he says, a choice that sacrificed efficiency for local prestige.
Longstanding reform ideas resurface as well. Proposals include a shortlist of rotating or permanent hosts to reuse venues, or more multi-country hosting to spread costs and limit new construction. Such approaches have political downsides: picking permanent hosts raises questions about governance and human-rights standards, and multi-nation plans require complex coordination.
Some organizers are experimenting with pragmatic solutions. The 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, for instance, are expanding their geographic footprint and moving certain competitions, like softball, to existing facilities in states such as Oklahoma — a move intended to cut costs, reach more fans, and stage events where demand is strong.
As Milan and Cortina finish preparations, the central question remains: do the prestige, tourism and short-term excitement outweigh the long-term financial and social risks for host communities? Residents, economists and politicians will be watching closely to see whether the spectacle justifies the bill.
![{“title”:”November 1938 Pogroms Revealed Nazi Brutality”,”content”:”\”I can still clearly remember the morning of November 10,\” W. Michael Blumenthal recalled. \”My father was arrested early in the morning. Amid the commotion and despite the fact that my mother had forbidden me to do so, I went outside without being noticed. I saw the broken shop windows on Kurfürstendamm boulevard and smoke coming out of the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse.\” He was just 12 years old.\n\nThe Fasanenstrasse synagogue in Berlin was set alight on the night of November 9, 1938, and the image of burning synagogues and shattered storefronts quickly became the emblem of a coordinated, nationwide assault on Jews. That night and the days that followed saw roughly 1,300 synagogues and some 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed; cemeteries, schools and homes were vandalized. Police largely stood aside as Jews were dragged into the streets, beaten and publicly humiliated. Fire brigades often refused to fight blazes in Jewish buildings, focusing instead on protecting \”Aryan\” properties.\n\nThe violence intensified on November 10, when about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps including Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Blumenthal\u2019s father was among those taken. Blumenthal remembered his mother\u2019s desperate questions as he was marched away: \”What’s going on? What are you doing with him? What has he done? Where is he being taken to?\” Even at 12, he felt the adults’ fear.\n\nBlumenthal’s family escaped to Shanghai in 1939, one of the few destinations then admitting Jewish refugees without visas. He later described his experience in his memoir From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century.\n\nThe attack did not come from nowhere. Anti-Jewish persecution had been official policy since the Nazis took power in 1933. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 legally defined Jews and imposed sweeping professional and social bans, and the program of \”Aryanization\” had already dispossessed many Jewish businesses and property. Still, historians mark November 1938 as a decisive break: the era of German Jewry as it had existed effectively ended, and German society was changed irreversibly.\n\nThe immediate pretext for the pogroms was the assassination on November 7, 1938, in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. Within hours of German radio reporting the killing, anti-Jewish riots erupted in some cities; two days later, after orders from the Nazi leadership, the violence was organized and intensified. At a gathering in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels drafted directives that called for the destruction of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Police were told not to intervene, firefighters were instructed to protect only non-Jewish buildings, and looting was officially prohibited even as theft nevertheless occurred.\n\nOfficials’ instructions were carried out across Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Many Germans either joined the attacks or watched without intervening. \”The November 1938 pogrom was carried out in plain sight,\” said Raphael Gross, president of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. \”It could be seen by everyone \u2014 the press of the world, foreign diplomats and all citizens.\”\n\nDiplomats in Germany reported scenes of \”cultural barbarism\” and widespread looting; some accounts were especially brutal. Reports collected by Hermann Simon, former director of the Centrum Judaicum, included the Polish consul general in Leipzig describing a woman stripped and nearly raped, the Latvian ambassador likening Kurfurstendamm to a battlefield, and the Finnish envoy noting pervasive shame and condemnation among the German population. Governments received these dispatches, but most took only limited action. A small number of concrete responses did follow: for example, the Kindertransport to England began after November 1938, bringing many children to safety. But by and large international reactions were inadequate.\n\nFew at the time predicted the scope of what would come. In a stark misjudgment, the Italian embassy wrote on November 16, 1938, that it was inconceivable Germany would one day send hundreds of thousands to execution or confine them in massive camps.\n\nHistorians today regard the events of November 9, 1938, as a turning point that revealed the regime’s readiness for widespread, state-condoned violence against Jews. Because the old term \”Kristallnacht\” is now seen as trivializing, the events are more accurately referred to as the Reichspogromnacht or the November Pogroms.\n\nThis piece is a rewritten account of reporting originally published in German and previously adapted in English.”]}](https://fresh-world-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/914-17213993_6-768x432.jpg)
![{“title”:”November 1938 Pogroms Revealed Nazi Brutality”,”content”:”\”I can still clearly remember the morning of November 10,\” W. Michael Blumenthal recalled. \”My father was arrested early in the morning. Amid the commotion and despite the fact that my mother had forbidden me to do so, I went outside without being noticed. I saw the broken shop windows on Kurfürstendamm boulevard and smoke coming out of the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse.\” He was just 12 years old.\n\nThe Fasanenstrasse synagogue in Berlin was set alight on the night of November 9, 1938, and the image of burning synagogues and shattered storefronts quickly became the emblem of a coordinated, nationwide assault on Jews. That night and the days that followed saw roughly 1,300 synagogues and some 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed; cemeteries, schools and homes were vandalized. Police largely stood aside as Jews were dragged into the streets, beaten and publicly humiliated. Fire brigades often refused to fight blazes in Jewish buildings, focusing instead on protecting \”Aryan\” properties.\n\nThe violence intensified on November 10, when about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps including Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Blumenthal\u2019s father was among those taken. Blumenthal remembered his mother\u2019s desperate questions as he was marched away: \”What’s going on? What are you doing with him? What has he done? Where is he being taken to?\” Even at 12, he felt the adults’ fear.\n\nBlumenthal’s family escaped to Shanghai in 1939, one of the few destinations then admitting Jewish refugees without visas. He later described his experience in his memoir From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century.\n\nThe attack did not come from nowhere. Anti-Jewish persecution had been official policy since the Nazis took power in 1933. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 legally defined Jews and imposed sweeping professional and social bans, and the program of \”Aryanization\” had already dispossessed many Jewish businesses and property. Still, historians mark November 1938 as a decisive break: the era of German Jewry as it had existed effectively ended, and German society was changed irreversibly.\n\nThe immediate pretext for the pogroms was the assassination on November 7, 1938, in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. Within hours of German radio reporting the killing, anti-Jewish riots erupted in some cities; two days later, after orders from the Nazi leadership, the violence was organized and intensified. At a gathering in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels drafted directives that called for the destruction of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Police were told not to intervene, firefighters were instructed to protect only non-Jewish buildings, and looting was officially prohibited even as theft nevertheless occurred.\n\nOfficials’ instructions were carried out across Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Many Germans either joined the attacks or watched without intervening. \”The November 1938 pogrom was carried out in plain sight,\” said Raphael Gross, president of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. \”It could be seen by everyone \u2014 the press of the world, foreign diplomats and all citizens.\”\n\nDiplomats in Germany reported scenes of \”cultural barbarism\” and widespread looting; some accounts were especially brutal. Reports collected by Hermann Simon, former director of the Centrum Judaicum, included the Polish consul general in Leipzig describing a woman stripped and nearly raped, the Latvian ambassador likening Kurfurstendamm to a battlefield, and the Finnish envoy noting pervasive shame and condemnation among the German population. Governments received these dispatches, but most took only limited action. A small number of concrete responses did follow: for example, the Kindertransport to England began after November 1938, bringing many children to safety. But by and large international reactions were inadequate.\n\nFew at the time predicted the scope of what would come. In a stark misjudgment, the Italian embassy wrote on November 16, 1938, that it was inconceivable Germany would one day send hundreds of thousands to execution or confine them in massive camps.\n\nHistorians today regard the events of November 9, 1938, as a turning point that revealed the regime’s readiness for widespread, state-condoned violence against Jews. Because the old term \”Kristallnacht\” is now seen as trivializing, the events are more accurately referred to as the Reichspogromnacht or the November Pogroms.\n\nThis piece is a rewritten account of reporting originally published in German and previously adapted in English.”]}](https://fresh-world-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/914-17213993_6-320x180.jpg)