Team Ireland Chef de Mission Nancy Chillingworth has expressed confidence that the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will be a success despite some concerns over infrastructure.<\/p>\n
International Olympic \u2060Committee president Kirsty Coventry admitted on Monday that preparation had been “bumpy” with some facets not completed with the opening ceremoney on Friday.<\/p>\n
Organisers have been busy trying to finish several venues that had been on an extremely tight deadline including the Cortina d’Ampezzo sliding centre, which had to be built from scratch, and the Santagiulia ice hockey venue in Milan.<\/p>\n
A cable car intended to carry spectators to the women’s Olympic Alpine skiing in Cortina will not be used as it has not been finished in time.<\/p>\n
Speaking to RT\u00c9 Sport in Predazzo, Chillingworth told RT\u00c9 Sport she has been assured by organisers today that all is in hand: “I think it will be ready. There are a few venues that aren’t quite ready yet. We had a meeting about it this morning.<\/p>\n
“There is always something, this is an Olympic Games and there has to be some story in the background. Quite often it’s about infrastructure, but when it comes to the athletes competing, the venues are always ready. I’m confident that they will be.”<\/p>\n
Heavy snow has arrived ahead of the start of the Games which is welcome, while also providing challenges.<\/p>\n
The \u2060first women’s downhill training tomorrow has been cancelled because of the conditions.<\/p>\n
Chillingworth and the four Irish Olympians face challenges travelling around a vast distance between where the events are taking place.<\/p>\n
Getting around from venue to venue is not an easy task.<\/p>\n
She explained: “It is lashing snow and it’s definitely making our journeys between the villages a little more challenging for those of us who aren’t used to driving in it.<\/p>\n
“But the snow conditions are starting to look really good.<\/p>\n
“They needed snow and it’s come in the last couple of days so I’m really optimistic.”<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s team are small in number, with just four athletes, but will compete in a vast array of events.<\/p>\n
The Team Ireland supremo has called for realism on how Thomas Maloney Westgard, Anabelle Zurbay, Ben Lynch and Cormac Comerford will fare in the coming days.<\/p>\n
“I think we always have to be careful how we frame performance and this is the same,” Chillingworth explained.<\/p>\n
“Whether we’re talking summer or winter, it’s really about the individual athletes and what their own performance targets.<\/p>\n
“For some athletes they’ll be targeting maybe even a top 10 finish and for other athletes actually qualifying for an Olympic Games is such a huge achievement.<\/p>\n
“Coming out if you can manage to do a personal best on the biggest stage, that’s a huge performance in itself.<\/p>\n
“For us it’s really the case that we need to understand what they’re targeting and then react in the in the correct way to how they perform.”<\/p>\n
Additional reporting: Reuters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Ireland Chef de Mission Nancy Chillingworth has expressed confidence that the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-280838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}