CORTINA, Italy — With less than a week until opening ceremonies, it's a race against time at many Olympic venues, where Italians are working to get everything ready for go-time.
At the Cortina Sliding Centre, ice making is now underway for bobsled, luge and skeleton races.
One of those workers is Sam. He makes ice by spraying the track with a spritzing hose.
"There's an art to it," he said.
"You have to freeze the water and create a layer by layer by layer — but really thin," Sam explained.
With temperatures hovering around 40 degrees outside, those layers need help from under-track refrigeration to turn into hard, fast ice — perfect for athletes racing down the course at breakneck speeds.
When your job title is icemaker, Sam said the ice tells a story.
"Did you see that? These lines," he said, pointing at some lines low on a curved wall of the track. "It means there was a crash. There was a crash right here."
Like many Olympic venues in this mountain town, the sliding center is nearly ready.
Asked if the track would be finished in time, Sam didn't hesitate.
"Yeah," he said. "We will be ready."
And if determination counts for anything, it will get across the finish line. For Sam, working on the Olympics is about far more than a paycheck.
"Just honestly, because I always dreamed to work with the Olympics," he said. "This was just a dream for me — for a lot of the Italians also. When I had this opportunity, I was so happy."
Many of the workers in Cortina are Italian, but not from the area. Sam, for example, lives in Rome and attends college there, taking time off to live his Olympic dream — making Olympic ice.
