Pipe leaks and puck joy: Milan’s winter wasteland comes alive for ice hockey opener
The hosts managed to just about get the Santagiulia arena ready for Italy’s win over France – and the locals responded‘Ladies and gentlemen! The women’s preliminary Group B match between Italy and France will get under way in five minutes! And the question is: Are! You! Ready! For! Hockey?!” Well, quite.That had been the question for the past five months, as it happens, ever since it first became obvious that construction of Milan’s new Santagiulia arena was running massively behind schedule.At the test event last month the ice was grey because there was so much building dust in it, and midway through the match a man had to come on to the rink to repair a melted patch with a watering can.So what was the answer at last? Well, it depends on how you define “ready”.As the International Olympic Committee’s executive director for the games, Christophe Dubi, admitted a couple of days ago: “Do we have every single space in that venue finished? No.
”There were a lot of half-built concession desks and dangling wires, the construction dust was so thick that shoes left tread outlines on the concrete, and some of the water pipes were leaking into the press room.But they had an ice sheet, 12,000 or so full seats, and someone even turned up with a bucket to catch the drips, which, when it comes down to it, was really all they needed.There hasn’t been an Olympic Games yet that hasn’t been plagued by questions about whether or not everything would be ready on time, but even by those standards the Italians have cut it fine.They had a team going around the toilets at Santagiulia putting plastic mats into all the urinals during the breaks between periods.No one had got around to filling the soap dispensers.
Or wiring up the pumps on the drinks machines,Or putting up permanent lighting along the escalators,Or finishing the paint work,Ten days before the game the man in charge of the ice, Don Moffatt, said it was “50/50” whether they would be able to get a game on,They did, which is a hell of a credit to Moffatt and his team, who have been working 12-hour shifts to do it.
And it was a good one too.A crowd came out, made a hell of a lot of noise, and had a high old time.Even in the north of Italy ice hockey is a minority sport and, after qualifying automatically as hosts, they are the lowest ranked team in the women’s competition.But they enjoyed a famous victory, beating France 4-1.If you were watching it on TV, you wouldn’t even have known anything was wrong.
The exterior cameras had been positioned in just such a way to cut out the vast brown industrial wasteland that surrounds the arena,Santagiulia isn’t really a hockey project at all,Milan doesn’t need, or want, a permanent venue for a sport hardly anyone here plays or watches,Hosting this tournament was just the price they had to pay to unlock the funding and permission they needed to redevelop this entire district around the new arena, which has been designed by the British firm David Chipperfield,Come back here in a decade and the place will be unrecognisable.
There are plans for 3,400 new homes, a park, and a shopping mall.By then the hockey rink will be long gone, repurposed for use as a concert hall.
‘If someone had pulled the trigger’: MPs rue lack of challenger to oust Starmer
The most dangerous moment of Keir Starmer’s premiership came just after lunchtime on Wednesday, when mutiny was the talk of the Commons tea room.Anger is widespread across Labour – but it was at its most palpable among the party’s new MPs, as the Conservatives used a humble address to force the disclosure of the vetting documents and communications linked to Peter Mandelson, disgraced by his close association with Jeffrey Epstein.“At about 2pm yesterday, if someone had pulled the trigger, we would have moved,” one 2024 intake MP said on Thursday. “No one dared. I think that says a lot
Lord Triesman obituary
The wide-ranging diversity of the employment and pursuits in the packed public life of David Triesman, Lord Triesman, who has died aged 82, was fuelled by a visionary idealism he first displayed as a teenage schoolboy and which he thereafter sustained throughout a rollercoaster ride in sport, business and politics.He began his working life as an academic, spent nearly two decades as a trade union leader, ran the Labour party as general secretary for two years in the troubled run-up to the Iraq war from 200103 and then became a government minister in the House of Lords. A qualified senior football referee who had played for Tottenham Hotspur’s youth team in the 1960s, he served as chair of the Football Association from 2008 to 2010. He remained an active member of the Lords and numerous public bodies, and in 2011 founded his own consultancy dealing in property and private equity.In a letter he wrote from Labour’s headquarters as general secretary in 2003, he sought to re-engage the political commitment of disaffected party members, after the early shine of the Blair government was dimmed with disillusion, by defining his own lifelong fervour for a fairer world
Starmer has ‘full confidence’ in Morgan McSweeney, No 10 says amid calls for his sacking – as it happened
Keir Starmer has full confidence in his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, Downing Street has said.There have been calls by backbenchers for the sacking of McSweeney, whom many blame for his ally Peter Mandelson’s appointment to the ambassadorship.Asked if the prime minister agreed with calls for his chief of staff to be sacked, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said:It’s full confidence.It comes as Downing Street said it was talking with the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) about the process of releasing documents related to Mandelson’s appointment.The spokesperson said:We have begun discussions with the ISC about the process for releasing these documents
Mr Rules hits tipping point as Mandelson proves the one mistake that can’t be undone
It’s beginning to feel terminal. Not that there hasn’t been talk of Labour MPs wanting to remove Keir Starmer before. Just that this time there’s the sense of a tipping point being reached. No more second chances. No praying for a miracle that will never come in the May elections
Former Tory head of London council appointed Reform leader in Wales
Dan Thomas, a former Conservative leader of Barnet council, has been announced by Nigel Farage as Reform UK’s leader in Wales, three months before Senedd elections in which the hard-right party could win the most seats in the country.Farage received a standing ovation before he introduced Thomas at a sold-out rally at the International Convention Centre Wales, near Newport, on Thursday morning. Journalists were jeered and booed during the media conference.Thomas led Barnet council between 2019 and 2022, when the north London council was seized by Labour, and defected to Farage’s Reform party last summer. He stood down in December as a councillor for Finchley Church End – long synonymous with Margaret Thatcher – to move back to his south Wales valleys home town, Blackwood
Starmer apologises to Epstein victims as he seeks to weather Mandelson scandal
Keir Starmer has attempted to reboot his faltering premiership, apologising for appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and urging his MPs to unite behind him.The prime minister gave a lengthy speech on Wednesday about community cohesion, but faced a barrage of questions about his leadership after one of his most turbulent days since entering Downing Street.With his authority over the Labour party and the Commons looking shakier than ever, the prime minister insisted he understood MPs’ concerns and issued a frank apology to victims of Jeffrey Epstein.Starmer said he regretted appointing Mandelson in Washington given his relationship with the financier and convicted child sex offender, about which he said the Labour peer had repeatedly lied.“The victims of Epstein have lived with trauma that most of us could barely comprehend, and they have to relive it again and again
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Bielle-Biarrey stars as France outplay Ireland to lay down a Six Nations marker
JD Vance’s first Olympic appearance unfolds with more photo-ops than protests