The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially the XX Olympic Winter Games (Italian: XX Giochi olimpici invernali) and also known as Torino 2006, were a winter multi-sport event held from 10 to 26 February 2006 in Turin, Italy. This marked the second time Italy had hosted the Winter Olympics, the first being in 1956 in Cortina d'Ampezzo; Italy had also hosted the Summer Olympics in 1960 in Rome.
Torino 2006
Turin was selected as the host city for the 2006 Games in June 1999. The official motto of Torino 2006 was "Passion lives here".[1] The Games' logo depicted a stylized profile of the Mole Antonelliana building, drawn in white and blue ice crystals, signifying the snow and the sky. The crystal web was also meant to portray the web of new technologies and the Olympic spirit of community. The 2006 Olympic mascots were Neve ("snow" in Italian), a female snowball, and Gliz, a male ice cube.[2]
The Oxford Olympics Study established the outturn cost of the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics at US $4.4 billion in 2015-dollars and cost overrun at 80% in real terms.[10] This includes sports-related costs only, that is, (i) operational costs incurred by the organizing committee for the purpose of staging the Games, e.g., expenditures for technology, transportation, workforce, administration, security, catering, ceremonies, and medical services, and (ii) direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build, e.g., the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs are not included, such as for road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or for hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to staging the Games. The cost and cost overrun for Torino 2006 compares with costs of US$2.5 billion and a cost overrun of 13% for Vancouver 2010, and costs of US$51 billion and a cost overrun of 289% for Sochi 2014, the latter being the most costly Olympics to date. Average cost for Winter Games since 1960 is US$3.1 billion, average cost overrun is 142%.
The 2006 Winter Olympics featured 84 medal events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports.[11] Events that made their Olympic debut in Turin included mass start biathlon, team sprint cross-country skiing, snowboard cross and team pursuit speed skating.[12] Most of the cross-country skiing events at these Games involved different distances from those at the previous Winter Games in 2002. The classical men's 50 km and women's 30 km distances, which were held at Salt Lake 2002, were not included in these Games, as these events were alternated with freestyle events of the same distances.[13]
Stefania Belmondo, a 10-time Olympic medalist in cross-country skiing, lit the Olympic Flame during the opening ceremony on 10 February. Before that, the ceremony celebrated the best of Italy and Sport including a segment honoring the Alps. The FilmMaster Group K-events (from March 2012: Filmmaster Events) created and produced the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the XX Winter Olympic Games in Turin in 2006. Executive Producer Marco Balich, Content Supervisor Alfredo Accatino, Art Direction Lida Castelli. Monica Maimone of Studio Festi directed the section From Renaissance To Baroque, part of the Opening Ceremony.[14][15]
Canada had another strong day on 15 February, setting new Olympic records in both men's and women's pursuit team speed skating events as well as opening the men's ice hockey competition with a win against Italy. Italy finished the day with the men's pursuit team Olympic record, however, after the Netherlands bettered Canada's time only to have Italy improve upon theirs. China won its first gold of 2006 with Wang Meng's victory in the women's individual 500-metre short track speed skating. A pair of Austrian brothers Andreas Linger and Wolfgang Linger won the men's doubles luge while Michaela Dorfmeister gave the nation another championship in the women's downhill.
On 22 February, the twelfth day of competition, Anja PÃrson won her first gold medal in the women's slalom; it was her fifth overall Olympic medal and third of the 2006 Games. Chandra Crawford took a quicker route to the top of the podium, winning the 1.1 kilometre cross-country sprint gold in her Olympic debut. In the men's ice hockey quarterfinals, the previously undefeated Slovaks lost to the Czech Republic while Russia, Finland, and Sweden eliminated Canada, the United States, and Switzerland, respectively. Philipp Schoch successfully defended his snowboarding giant slalom gold against his brother Simon.
A record 80 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) entered athletes at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. This was an increase of two from the 78 represented at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The number in parentheses indicates the number of participants that NOC contributed. It was the first appearance for Albania, Ethiopia and Madagascar. It was the only appearance at the Winter Olympics for Serbia and Montenegro, coming between the country's name change in 2003 from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Montenegro's then-pending vote for independence in May 2006.
Out of 40,000 applicants, 20,000 volunteers were selected to help the athletes, spectators, and journalists, and to prepare the competition sites. They were selected by the recruiting program Noi2006.[18]
On 25 April 2007, six Austrian athletes (Roland Diethard, Johannes Eder, Wolfgang Perner, JÃrgen Pinter, Wolfgang Rottmann and Martin Tauber) were banned for life from the Olympics for their involvement in the doping scandal at the 2006 Turin Olympics, the first time the IOC punished athletes without a positive or missed doping test. The Austrians were found guilty of possessing doping substances and taking part in a conspiracy, based on materials seized by Italian police during the raid on the living quarters. The Austrians also had their competition results from Turin annulled.[36]
The IOC has retested nearly 500 doping samples that were collected at the 2006 Turin Games. In 2014, the Estonian Olympic Committee was notified by the IOC that a retested sample from cross-country skier Kristina Å migun had tested positive. On 24 October 2016, the World Anti-Doping Agency Athletes' Commission stated that Å migun, who won two gold medals at the Turin Games, faces a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing before the end of October.[39] In December 2017, IOC announced that re-analysis of samples resulted in no positive cases.[40]
Torino 2006 is the official video game of the XX Olympic Winter Games, hosted by Torino, Italy in 2006. Developed by German studio 49Games and published by 2K Games (and I-play), it was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. It is the first licensed Olympic video game to be released on a Microsoft home console, since a planned Xbox version of the prior installment, Salt Lake 2002, was cancelled.
For the first time, live video coverage of the Games was available on mobile phones. Video coverage was available in 18 countries on five continents. In another first, television viewers in Mongolia and Azerbaijan were also able to watch all the action. Surfing the internet for results proved popular too, with torino2006.org registering approximately 700 million page views, and the site of the International Olympic Committee, Olympic.org, over 32 million.
Jean-Pierre Vidal missed one-and-a-half years of competition after sustaining a major injury in a fall in March 1999. He came back to win the gold medal in the slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games, and hoped to defend his title in 2006. But the day before the slalom competition, Vidal went for a pleasure ski to celebrate his 29th birthday, fell, broke his left arm and had to withdraw.
The exciting sport of snowboard cross was included in the Olympic program for the first time in 2006. Competitors race against each other in groups of four on a course that includes banked turns, jumps and difficult terrain. The first gold medals were won by Seth Wescott of the United States and Tanja Frieden of Switzerland.
The Torino 2006 Paralympic Winter Games saw 474 Para athletes (375 men and 99 women) from 38 countries contest 58 medal events across five sports. Russia topped the medals table and 165,974 spectators attended the Games. Two NPCs took part in a Paralympic Winter Games for the first time and wheelchair curling made its Paralympic debut.
Held on 10 March, the Torino 2006 Paralympics Opening Ceremony involved an audience of about 25,000 and was broadcast live to millions of viewers around the globe. The theme of the Ceremony was overcoming limitations and was a celebration of those who choose not to surrender.
Team USA started the 2006 Olympic Winter Games strong, rolling through the preliminary round undefeated and outscoring opponents, 18-3, in the process. The first round included wins over Switzerland (6-0), Germany (5-0) and Finland (7-3), and sent the U.S. to the semifinals against Sweden. Against the Swedes, the Americans held a 39-18 advantage in shots and were up 2-0, but ended up falling 3-2, in a shootout. The U.S. loss was the first-ever against Sweden and set Team USA up for a bronze-medal match-up with Finland, where the Americans posted a 4-0 victory.
Objectives: The aims were to describe the organization and provision of medical care in the Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games in light of the epidemiology of illnesses and injuries among athletes during this event.
Torino 2006 - the Official Video Game of the XX Olympic Winter Games is one of the longest and most unnecessary titles in video game history. And it also happens to be a pretty lousy game, to boot. It's not as if the Olympics, be it summer or winter, has had anything special to call its own when it comes to video game adaptations over the years, but Torino 2006 is especially egregious in that it pares down the number of included events to a fairly measly number, manages to make every single one of them completely uninteresting, and skimps entirely on the presentation. Yes, it's only a $20 game, but that $20 would be better spent practically any other conceivable way.
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