Italian athlete inspired by experience in China

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy－A 14-day visit to Beijing has left Italian Mattia Gaspari with beautiful memories. Recalling his days in Beijing after returning to Italy, the skeleton Olympian says that he had raced on the most magnificent track he has ever seen.

To Gaspari, the Winter Olympics had a special meaning, as northern Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo, his hometown, will co-host the next edition of the event with Milan in 2026.And he hopes the 2026 Games will be hosted in a similar way to those held in Beijing, where people from different countries and regions learned from one another and collaborated.

"Italy and China have a close relationship, which I think is really important, and we should pave the way for easier cooperation and the exchange of information and ideas," Gaspari says.

Gaspari came to China for the first time in October to try the Olympic track.

"I saw the Great Wall of China and it was almost a tourist experience," says the first-time Olympian, who was among 119 athletes dispatched by Italy to compete in 14 disciplines.

His second visit to China "was even more beautiful", because the athletes entered the Winter Olympics with everything focused on the Games. "You could feel the Olympic spirit because there are so many athletes from different nations and of different disciplines," recalls Gaspari.

Gaspari raced at China's National Sliding Center, a venue that also hosted bobsleigh and luge events. Built in the mountains in Yanqing, a suburban district in Beijing, the track has 16 curves with different angles and slopes.

"We have never seen a track like this. It was a big track, and the view, when I stepped onto the top of the track, was beautiful to see," Gaspari says.

The Olympics can provide a platform for better understanding, says Gaspari. "Just the fact of meeting and being together helps. Just like in Beijing, we stayed together, and I could see how other nations worked, how they organized events, and you could learn and collaborate on various things."

His hometown, Cortina d'Ampezzo, a well-known destination for ski lovers, boasts a tradition of winter sports with some 115 kilometers of pistes and snow coverage of over 95 percent from December to April. It hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956 and will jointly host the 2026 edition with Milan.

As well as the mountains that helped Cortina d'Ampezzo become a host city of the event, there were other elements that offered him the possibility of becoming a professional athlete, Gaspari says.

"More than the city, it was the people who competed in the sport before me, because my family, and other people I have met, have a competitive mentality. They had to train every day to reach a certain goal," says Gaspari, whose mother and younger sister are also winter sports professionals.

China and Italy have agreed to support each other in hosting the Winter Olympics and to expand new areas of cooperation in the two countries' ice and snow industries.

"You can always learn from someone. I am not an expert in economics, but I believe that a commercial relationship between the two countries is important," says Gaspari.

He adds that he hopes the sustainability of the facilities in Cortina d'Ampezzo will be developed in a similar way to that of Beijing, which remodeled some stadiums originally built for the 2008 Summer Olympics and recast an obsolete industrial area into a winter sport site.

It would be necessary to take care of sustainability and use systems that allow energy saving in all of the venues, he says.

"Certainly, reusing the facilities is the future of the Olympic Games. Here we have a beautiful track which I hope young people can use for skeleton, bobsleigh and sledding, not only from Italy but also from all over the world," Gaspari adds.

Xinhua