Canada typically sends one moose statue to the athletes village, but this year, because the Games are spread out across Italy's mountains, they will be sending six.Rebecca Blackwell/The Canadian Press
The Canadian Olympic Committee has a tradition of sending a life-sized moose statue with its team to each Olympic Games and displaying it as a sort of mascot in the athletes’ village.
As the federation prepares to compete at the upcoming Milano Cortina Winter Games – considered the most geographically widespread Olympics in history, and one with six different athletes villages – Team Canada needed a few more moose.
The 2026 Olympics next month will feature events in 16 winter sports at venues spanning 22,000 square kilometres of Northern Italy. It’s the first edition of the Winter Games with a multi-centred model and it poses logistical challenges big and small.
The Games’ two headlining hosts are Milan – Italy’s fashion, design and finance hub – and Cortina d’Ampezzo, a glamorous winter resort in the Dolomites mountain range. But several other mountain clusters are hosting competitions and athletes villages too – in Bormio, Livigno, Predazzo, and Anterselva – before the closing ceremony takes place in a Roman amphitheatre in Verona.
Canada will have over 200 Olympians competing, with the largest number in Milan, host for hockey, figure skating, short track and long track speed skating. So, the same moose statue that went to the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics will stand in Milan’s athletes village (the statue is shipped in a box in pieces and assembled upon arrival). The COC will also send new smaller moose statues to the other athletes villages.
“We want to make sure everyone feels the love of the moose,” said Marie-Andree Lessard, senior director of games for the COC, the logistics guru for the national federation.
It’s one small example of how complex it’s been to support every Canadian athlete across all of those hubs and make them all feel united as part of Team Canada. Some of the smaller clusters – such as the one that will host Nordic skiing and ski jumping – will have only about a dozen Canadian athletes.
Travelling between the clusters could take more than a few hours by car, bus or train, and is not advised, especially as many of the mountain towns are accessed by small, remote wintery roads. Few will cross clusters, other than Canada’s essential staff or coaches needed in more than one venue.
The decentralized Games call for a creative approach to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies on Feb. 6. The main ceremony will take place at Milan’s 70,000-seat San Siro Stadium while simultaneous ceremonies happen in Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo. During the athlete parade, cameras will jump between places to show each country’s athletes marching. Canada will announce its flagbearers Wednesday, but they may be in any cluster.
Cathal Kelly: With Carney in tow, Canada is taking no prisoners at the Milan Olympics
The COC will not operate a single Canada Olympic House at these Games like they often do, a gathering place for family, friends and stakeholders. Instead they will rotate a “Canada Olympic house Celebration Series” through some clusters, pop-up style – in Cortina, then Livigno and closing in Milan, all with different vibes.
Unable to centralize medical and support staff in one main hub, the COC has dispersed them across the clusters. They shipped 10 containers of stuff by sea freight to Italy – everything from clothing to fitness equipment, medical supplies, massage tables, and snacks – which must then be delivered from a central warehouse in Milan to the various clusters. Four of those containers alone were full of the Lululemon Team Canada clothing – puffy winter wear expertly squished down for travel. The athletes will receive those when they arrive at their accommodation.
“Everything we do, we do it with the lens of what best supports performance,” said Lessard.
The vast spread of Milano Cortina 2026 resulted from Olympic Agenda 2020, which focused on reusing or repurposing existing venues and minimizing new construction, making the Games more sustainable long-term for host cities.
Athletes in the Cortina hub, for example, will stay in a new pop-up trailer park style athletes villages in the mountains. The mobile, prefabricated homes, each roughly the size of a small apartment, will be moved to campsites across Italy after the Games are over.
Meet the Canadians in charge of maintaining Olympic-quality ice in Milan
Canada’s curlers are staying in Cortina’s mobile village and plan to have fun with the “glamping” accommodations, bringing comforts like nice blankets and chairs so they can socialize and play cards. Curling has typically been in the main village at an Olympics, so being in the mountain hub will bring new experiences and athletes to meet, but they’re also happy to focus on themselves.
“Our Olympic experience is going to come in handy. We’ve been there before, so we don’t have that same urge to be in the opening or closing ceremonies, or need the full village experience,” said curler Marc Kennedy. “Those are wonderful experiences, but having been there before, I think we’re okay with knowing we’re a little bit separated ... we have a job to do.”
Some existing iconic alpine ski venues will be used – despite being separated by some 300 kilometres. Alpine Canada’s athletes will be spread across three different venues, making it complex for them to organize.
The women’s alpine races will be at Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina, a popular stop on their World Cup circuit. The men’s alpine skiing will take place at one of their marquee World Cup spots, the fearsome Stelvio course in Bormio. The ski cross athletes will compete about 40 kilometres northwest of that in Livigno at a new purpose-built venue. Paralympic alpine events will be in Cortina.
The Cortina athletes village is a temporary complex of modular mobile homes that will later be used for camping in the years that follow the Games.STEFANO RELLANDINI/AFP/Getty Images
“The idea being, let’s use existing venues, spruce up those venues, keep costs down, and that is a better way to host,” said Therese Brisson, president and CEO at Alpine Canada. “That might indeed be the case, but it’s not less expensive or complicated for the [national sport organizations] and for the sports.”
Some of Alpine Canada’s key staff members will need to travel among the ski hubs to try to support their athletes. It may feel more like separate World Cups rather than an Olympics. Having the alpine men and women competing at different alpine venues also means there will be no alpine mixed team event at the 2026 Olympics.
“The mixed event was the best event of our world championships last year,” said Brisson. “It’s very entertaining, and you can’t do it at these Games.”
What is your favourite Winter Olympics memory? Share your story with The Globe
It will be a challenge to keep Canada’s athletes feeling connected as one team at these Games while they are separated in various spread-apart clusters. The COC will have an internal platform to send each other messages; they’ll hold coffee chats and share highlight videos across the team. Canada’s chef de mission Jenn Heil will be one of the few to travel to multiple clusters and support as many athletes as possible.
It won’t be easy for an athlete to travel to an event in another cluster, after an athlete is done competing. It also will be quite a journey for many athletes who want to participate in the closing ceremonies in Verona – some 250 kilometres from Cortina and 168 kilometres from Milan.
Learnings from this widespread Games will come in handy while planning for 2030 Winter Olympics which will take place within four clusters of France, united as the “French Alps.” The IOC’s sustainable approach is here to stay.
“The good news about this, is that’s also what we’ll anticipate for the next Winter Games in the French Alps,” said Lessard. “I went on the site visit in early September, and it’s going to be very similar.”