Mark Messer checks the thickness of the ice at the Olympic speed-skating oval in Rho, on the northern outskirts of Milan. The upcoming Olympics will be Messer’s seventh Winter Games, and his ‘biggest Olympic ice-making challenge.’Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
The weather in Milan on Thursday did not please Canadian ice maestro Mark Messer. It was damp and humid with an outdoor temperature of 7 C, balmy by Canadian standards.
“Humidity is our enemy,” he said, walking in the drizzle just beyond the drab, warehouse-style buildings that house the speed-skating oval in Milan’s Rho suburb for the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. “Humidity creates frost on the ice, just like the frost that sticks on your car window in the winter.”
The last thing this chief icemaker from Calgary needs three weeks before the Olympics is frost on the oval. The ice has to be mirror-smooth and hard – harder than hockey ice and much harder than figure-skating ice, which has to provide some cushioning to help absorb the shock of hard landings. Frost or squishy ice on the 400-metre track would slow down the skaters, who have trained four years for this, and put them in a foul mood.
Messer said the ice needs to be thick enough to handle a Zamboni, but not so thick that it’s difficult to cool.Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
This is Messer’s seventh stint at a Winter Games and his “biggest Olympic ice-making challenge.”
“I bring experience,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
His son, an ice-making engineer for the Edmonton Oilers, will join him at the long-track venue during the Games, driving the ice-surfacing machine. The two are among several Canadians brought to Italy for the world’s biggest sporting event, to make and maintain top-quality ice, from speed skating to hockey to curling.
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These veteran icemakers learned their craft in Canada but have been creating ice at championship events around the world. For decades, they’ve been troubleshooting the many things that can go wrong with ice.
While their sports are different, they share some of the same challenges in Italy, such as venues still under construction or minimal test events.
Long-track
Messer is the director of Calgary’s Olympic Oval, considered the world’s fastest ice, a place where more than 300 world records have been smashed.
The Milano Speed Skating Stadium is different. It’s the first indoor temporary speed-skating rink ever built for an Olympics. The oval is housed inside two exhibition pavilions at a former trade fair site, better known for hosting the world’s largest furniture and interior design exhibition. When the Games are over, those pavilions will return to their original function.
Messer is among several Canadian icemakers brought to Italy for the Olympics.Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
Creating perfect speed-skating ice inside a pop-up venue is a complicated venture. The floor needs insulation and a network of tubes. The water must be purified precisely. And the ice must be thicker. Messer drilled a small hole in his Milan ice to measure it – five centimetres thick. He said he would add a layer of water to make it 5.5 centimetres, and possibly another to reach six centimetres for ideal thickness – strong enough that it doesn’t flex and crack under a Zamboni, but not so thick that it’s hard to cool from top to bottom.
Messer believes his Italian technicians will find the magic formula in time. They’ve only had one junior World Cup event to test the ice.
“It’s fun but it’s a challenge,” he said. “We’ll make it happen because it has to happen, that’s it.”
Hockey
Don Moffatt from Peterborough, Ont., is chief icemaker at the two Olympic hockey arenas in Milan and says this is the hardest of the five Olympics he’s worked. He’s also an ice technician for the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche.
While progress is nearly complete at the two rinks inside one arena, the other – Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena – is still undergoing major construction around the field of play, so the ice Moffatt put in for a recent test event is now dirty, trod on by workers finishing the score clock, adjusting speakers and building scaffolding.
Reached by phone in Milan Thursday, he said the ice is the “jewel of the building” and there are “probably 50 people walking around” on it – but he’s keeping his sense of humour.
Don Moffatt has been in Milan since October, as chief icemaker at the city’s two Olympic hockey arenas. One is the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, shown on Jan. 10.Claudia Greco/Reuters
“There have been days when you just want to bang something, but I’ve learned to stay calm and only worry about what I can worry about.”
Once construction wraps, and workers and heavy equipment slow their trips through the Zamboni room, Moffatt will do a big fix-up on the ice surface at Santagiulia next week. He’ll shave down the dirty, muddy ice then repaint it white and put on hockey markings and the Olympic logos.
Moffatt has been in Milan since October. Test events have taken place at both arenas now, and he was pleased with how his ice held up during three-game days held at both, with the latest just last weekend.
Most of the supplies being used on the Olympic ice have come from Canada, such as hockey boards, water treatment equipment and Zambonis.
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Moffatt said he’s “100 per cent confident” the ice will be top quality for the Games. He recognizes when it’s good and he’s frank when it’s not up to his standards.
“You listen to the sounds, you watch the skate marks. You look at the snow when they stop to see if it floats up,” he said. “You watch how the pucks react on long passes, and hopefully they stay flat.”
The ice must befit the most anticipated international hockey action in years – featuring skyrocketing female talent, and the return of NHL athletes to the Olympics for the first time since 2014.
“I’ve got the best seat in the house,” Moffatt said. “I get to stand behind the Zamboni gate and watch the best athletes in the world do what they do.”
Inside the Cortina Olympic Curling Stadium, which has been renovated for the 2026 Games.Giovanni Auletta/The Associated Press
Curling
Meanwhile, in Cortina, the mountain cluster of the 2026 Olympics around 400 kilometres from Milan, an icemaker from Oakbank, Man., heads to his first Games to work as deputy ice technician on a team of technicians from Scotland and Italy at the curling venue.
Curling Canada’s chief ice technician Greg Ewasko has made pebbled ice for top curling events in Canada and overseas. He has developed a feel for good curling ice.
“If you don’t have that feel, you’ll never have a great event,” he told The Globe in a phone interview from his Manitoba home last month. “The ice feels nice and sticky when I rub my feet, and I’m not sliding around, there’s traction. I usually walk around an arena when no one’s around feeling for air drafts.”
Surrounded by snow-capped peaks in the Dolomites, Cortina Olympic Curling Stadium was originally built for the 1956 Winter Games, and has been renovated for the 2026 Games.
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The icemakers must control the climate inside by anticipating how much the body heat and presence of thousands of fans will raise the venue’s temperature during a live curling event. Frost may form on the ice, which could change how the stones move.
They meticulously maintain the ice by repeatedly shaving and repebbling to control speed and curl, with precise temperature and humidity control. Limiting air currents is tough in the old building, plus the temperature outside can impact conditions inside.
Curling icemakers hope for cold weather with little humidity during the Games. Ewasko didn’t get so lucky in Halifax during the Canadian Olympic Curling trials in November, when curlers battled frost.
Relationships with players and coaches are important as they provide feedback about the ice.
“I can take it,” Ewasko said. “You have to hear it all – good, bad or indifferent.”
“You want a 40-pound rock to land within one centimetre of the pinhole, or on the pinhole. So the conditions have to be just right.”