With just nine months to go until the 2026 Winter Olympics, Team Ireland’s Chef de Mission Nancy Chillingworth has described the upcoming Games as logistically complex but filled with potential.

“The Games are spread right across northern Italy,” she said, citing clusters from Milan to the Alps, Livigno, Bormio, the Dolomites and Cortina d’Ampezzo. “It’s a sign of how future Winter Games will be — focused on sustainability and using existing venues.”

To reduce travel times for athletes, organisers have created six separate athlete villages — and with Ireland likely to have competitors in up to five of them, maintaining cohesion and support across the delegation will be no small feat.

“With such a small team, we have to be really strategic with support staff,” Chillingworth said. “We’re targeting five to eight athletes across up to seven disciplines.”

Confirmed qualification so far includes one cross-country skier and two alpine skiers. Other athletes are tracking in sports such as freestyle skiing, snowboard halfpipe, luge, skeleton, and short-track skating.

One potential headline story would be a fourth Olympic appearance for snowboarder Seamus O’Connor, and a third for Cross country skier Thomas Maloney Westgaard.

Collaborations for Performance

To ensure adequate support despite limited accreditations, Team Ireland is collaborating with Denmark and Iceland on shared physiotherapy services. “It’s a really exciting partnership,” Chillingworth said. “It’ll help us stretch resources while maintaining high performance standards.”

Team Ireland will also stage a brief pre-Games camp in Bolzano to build a sense of unity among athletes based across the globe.

“Team culture is so important,” she stressed. “We saw the impact of isolation during Beijing 2022 due to COVID — this time, we’re building in connectedness from the start.”

Innovative Opening Ceremony Plans

Another standout feature of Milan-Cortina will be the decentralised opening ceremony.

While the main event will take place at Milan’s San Siro stadium, parallel celebrations will occur in Cortina, Livigno, and Predazzo.

“Athletes will be able to parade locally in their own cluster,” Chillingworth explained. “with simultaneous broadcast back to Milan and around the world.”

“It’s designed to encourage more participation and reduce disruption to their routines.”

Performance Goals and Public Engagement

Chillingworth’s ambitions are grounded in both results and representation. “We want to reframe what ‘performance’ means in a Winter Games context,” she said. “A top-10 in cross-country skiing, for example, would be phenomenal. It’s about recognising how elite these achievements are — especially when we’re a country without snow, and without a permanent ice facility.”

That may soon change, with recent news suggesting a permanent ice venue could finally be on the horizon — a development Chillingworth described as “potentially transformative” for Ireland’s winter sports landscape.

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Looking Ahead

With Olympic qualification windows closing as late as January 2026, Ireland’s final team won’t be confirmed until weeks before the Games. But the direction is clear: a small, determined team backed by smart planning, growing collaboration, and a vision to raise Ireland’s Winter Olympic profile.

“This isn’t my comfort zone,” Chillingworth admitted. “I prefer to stay in the background and let the athletes shine. But it’s important to tell this story — because it’s not just about medals, it’s about building something bigger for Irish sport.”

 

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Further Reading for Sport for Business members:

Check out more of our Sport for Business coverage of Winter Sports

 

SPORT FOR BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE

As a nation we love to become immersed in sport at the highest level.  After two consecutive Winter Games in Korea and China, this is the first of back to back games in the Alps, first Italy, then in 2030 France.  Better TV Viewing times, greater real time engagement and a realistic chance to experience the Olympics in person makes it an exciting time

WHAT’S UP NEXT?

We’ll be diving deeper into Nancy Chillingworth’s story and that of the Winter Olympics when she appears as our guest on next week’s Sport for Business Podcast

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