The Tyrol (or Tirol) is a historic region in the Alps that straddles the Austrian-Italian border. There’s the Austrian Tyrol, which forms the Austrian state of Tyrol (Bundesland Tirol) with its capital of Innsbruck and South Tyrol (Südtirol/Alto Adige), the southern part that became Italian territory after World War I. That is now an autonomous province of Italy with its capital being Bolzano/Bozen (the place of my state’s heritage). There’s area is still largely German-speaking despite being in Italy. Geographically its located in the central-eastern Alps and the Tyrol is characterized by dramatic mountain scenery including parts of the Dolomites, extensive skiing areas, and picturesque alpine villages. It’s bordered by Germany to the north, Switzerland to the west, and the Italian regions of Lombardy and Veneto to the south. Historically, it was ruled by the House of Habsburg as the County of Tyrol and it was a unified region until 1919 when the Treaty of Saint-Germain awarded South Tyrol to Italy as part of the post-WWI settlement, splitting the region. It’s especially famous for world-class skiing…especially Cortina d’Ampezzo, the site of the 1956 Winter Olympic Games. This week we will be seeing a lot of the region since the 2026 Winter Olympic Games are being hosted jointly between Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Cortina d’Ampezzo will host three main types of events at the 2026 Winter Olympics: curling at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium, sliding sports (bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton) at the Cortina Sliding Centre, and alpine skiing at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre. The Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium (originally built for the 1956 Winter Olympics) will host curling. The Bobsleigh, Luge, and Skeleton will be at the Cortina Sliding Centre (newly built on the site of the old Eugenio Monti track). And the Alpine Skiing will be at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre. In addition, the Anterselva Biathlon Arena, located about 25 miles from the other Cortina venues, will host biathlon events , though this is technically in a different area. Cortina is reprising its role from 1956 when it previously hosted the Winter Olympics, making it one of the few cities to host twice…pretty impressive for a city of 7,000 nestled in these craggy and remote mountains of Northern Italy.
I feel a particular connection to this Tyrolean area, not only because its where my father and his family are from, but also because in 1968 I spent my first Christmas away from home in those mountains. I was invited to join a Dutch family who lived near us in Rome for a ski trip to Cortina and a nearby ski resort called San Martino di Castrozzo, which is 50 miles from Cortina. I also once took a motorcycle trip to the region back in 2000 when I owned half of a BMW motorcycle dealership. I had gone to the Intermot Show in Munich and taken a company-sponsored tour with an Edelweiss Tour down through the Grossglockner Pass. We stayed in Cortina and while the rest of the riding crew wandered about the town, I spent the day with the Edelweiss Tourguide going though the 13 mountain passes in the Dolomites. With an average of 10 switchbacks up and down, that meant that I covered 260 switchbacks that one day of riding. In the same way that skiing there in 1968 honed my ski skills, riding those switchbacks in 2000 really honed by mountain riding technique. I will be watching the televised scenes from Cortina in the coming weeks for familiar surroundings.
In 2002 the Winter Olympic Games were in Salt Lake City. But like the situation with Milan and Cortina, the games that year were really split between Salt Lake City and Park City, where the alpine, Nordic and sliding events took place. In 2002 I owned a massive 11,000 square foot ski house in Park City, so for three weeks I played host to everyone I knew. I had pre-purchased $38k worth of venue tickets for every event there was from the opening to the closing ceremonies. I remember it all very well. We even went out to the Nordic Center at Soldiers Hollow in Heber, which was not unlike the Anterselva Biathlon Arena, about 25 miles away in a different part of the Wasatch Mountain range. It was a bitterly cold winter, as I recall, and I have pictures of my buddy, Frank, and I bundled up to go watch the ski jumping. At least that was an event where spectating made some sense. The nearby sliding events like Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton were ridiculous. After walking up hundreds of yards in the cold and standing, freezing, at some obscure corner in the track, we would see something streak by, only being able to presume that it was one of the contestants. The sliding sports are much better viewed from the comfort of your living room. As for the alpine events, watching the ending of the downhill and giant slalom held some interest and, or course, the more compact events like slalom, snowboarding, mogul skiing and such were good spectator events from the stands near the event. Still, we spent a lot of time bundled up wondering why we had paid so much to freeze our asses off to see something that was more easily viewed on TV. We comforted ourselves with the idea that this was a once in a lifetime event.
One of the most memorable things we did was go down to Salt Lake City for some of the skating events. The short track speed skating was particularly interesting except that the shape of the stadium was such that it felt like we were sitting at the top of a very deep bowl watching ants race around the rim. The hockey games were also exciting that year. The 2002 Winter Olympics hockey tournament in Salt Lake City was a historic success for Canada. Canada won gold, defeating the host United States 5-2 in the final game, ending a 50-year gold medal drought. This was a huge moment for Canadian hockey. But the U.S. had a strong tournament too, beating Finland 6-0, and tying Russia 2-2. The U.S. beat Russia 3-2 in the semifinals before falling to Canada in the final for silver. I went to that semifinal game with my daughter Carolyn, who painted her face with an American Flag. Her picture got taken and put on the front page of USA Today, so we had quite a memento of that unique moment in Olympic history. I know Carolyn will be watching the Milan/Cortina Olympics this next few weeks very intently, remembering those days 25 years ago.
While the world focuses on the peace embodied in the Olympic spirit, I see that the Russia/Ukraine/US peace talks have broken down, that Iran is now clearly building out its nuclear launch capabilities, that the existing US/Russia nuclear non-proliferation treaty has been allowed to expire, and that Trump has been busy holding a two-hour talk with Xi Jinping on the topic of their Manifest Destiny over Taiwan. We will continue to delude ourselves that we seek peace and that Trump is the master peacenik while we play in the snow and make great platitudes about the Olympic spirit.