Milan construction workers put on brave face as race to finish Olympic hockey arena comes down to the wire

Chris Jones reports from Milan ahead of the Milano Cortina Olympics.

On a crisp, clear Saturday afternoon, the late-day sun reflected off the Milano Santagiulia hockey arena’s aluminum facade. If only for a minute or two, it looked as it was meant to look, the way it’s appeared for years in renderings and promises.

It shined like Olympic gold.

Then the sun set just a little more, slipping behind some thin cloud, and the gleaming vision made way for a bleaker reality: The troubled arena, a little over a month before it’s meant to host its first hockey game — before it’s meant to host the world — isn’t going to get finished.

Will it get finished enough is the real question.

A little after four o’clock, an exhausted string of construction workers staggered past the barricades at the end of their shift, as though answering the church bell that chimed in the distance.

Many still wore their green and yellow safety vests. Their hard hats sat perched on their heads or belted to their waists. They spoke to each other in Italian and Arabic and a mix of the two.

An older man named Michel, hunched against the cold, waited for them in his mobile cantina, which looked as though it hadn’t been mobile for some time. A worker climbed up Michel’s steps, made from pallets, and treated himself to an after-work espresso in a small paper cup.

Four other men continued toiling nearby, piecing together a white tent that will serve as the entrance to the wide boulevard that will grant fans access to the arena. The workers had already erected a string of pointy concession tents, the sound of their drills and Michel’s generator in a deafening war for supremacy.

It’s hard to believe that any winners will be crowned here soon.

The arena has been the subject of ominous complaints from the NHL, which, for the first time since 2014, has agreed to release its players for the Olympics, and now is threatening to reconsider. The sheet, while within international standards, is smaller than NHL rinks. There are also concerns that the untested plant won’t produce safe ice, flood after flood.

Organizers have tried to dispel those fears the way Michel did between customers.

“It has to get done,” he said. “So it will get done.”

Given the still-raw state of the place, rink dimensions and ice quality seem like small worries. A test event is scheduled for Jan. 9-11. On Saturday, it wasn’t clear how players, never mind crowds, would find their way inside.