The village of Livigno: There is an Olympic flair here – at least for the guests

The perfumeries are currently noticeably empty. Behind most entrance doors you will only find exasperated staff, full shelves and test bottles that have not been tested for so long that even in the fragrance shops it suddenly smells like normal heating air. And the sense of smell doesn’t work in other areas either, not even in places where you can hardly stand it in winter sports resorts: not even at 4.30 p.m. in one of the many ski rental shops does it smell like sweat.

Livigno has won the contract to host the Winter Olympics. But not only did he lose his usual smells and feelings that came with the holiday guests and day tourists. Some say Livigno has lost even more: its well-known identity.

To find a piece of it, you can stop by “Lafranconi Sport”. On Monday evening in the first week of the Olympics, an older gentleman who introduced himself as Matteo was sitting behind the cash register in one of the oldest sports shops in town. Then he quickly looks at his tablet and is indignant: the Italian curling duo of Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner is about to lose in the semifinals against the USA. That too! Now they don’t even win when he already has time to watch TV that he doesn’t want.

Normally it’s out on the street and in his shop milk milk packed at this time of year. And now, at the Olympics, no one is coming to buy anything. The organizing committee and the local administration had predicted 20 to 30 percent losses for the shops, but they are currently making 80 to 90 percent less sales, says Monica. Matteo’s wife has just sold a ski jacket, and now she can have a say: In the other 257 shops in Livigno, “it’s exactly the same,” she says.

She knows the number by heart; the shops are a pride of the city. In Livigno they still see themselves today tradersas a dealer and seller, that has a great tradition here. It was Napoleon who declared the strategically important valley between Switzerland and Italy a duty-free zone in 1805 so that people could settle here all year round. The Empire of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy later also granted the privilege to the small town. Not even the rule-loving EU had anything against it. So they traded in Livigno, selling perfume, alcohol and other luxury items, especially to the neighboring Swiss, Italian skiers and later increasingly tourists from Eastern Europe. And with the money the community earned, the ski area and winter sports in the valley were expanded, attracting tourism and the locals lived peacefully. Until the road was closed to them.

Private transport must remain outside. There is almost as little going on “as in Covid times”

The Milano-Cortina 2026 Games should not create chaos from private traffic on narrow Alpine passes, but rather be a sustainable showcase project. So there were strict requirements, residential zones, traffic bans, up and down the whole valley. But who takes the bus to Livigno to go skiing and buy perfume? Nobody, months in advance it was said that the entire province of Sondrio should be avoided in February. So the road over the Foscagno and Eira passes is empty than it has been for a long time. Many locals say that the traffic in Valtellina currently feels “like in Covid times”. But it’s better to be anonymous, you don’t want to cause trouble.

Matteo does, he doesn’t like these games. He rents out a few rooms in his small albergo; Chinese journalists rented rooms from him for the Olympics. “But they even brought their own food,” he says with the same indignation as he had earlier at curling. The sport is nice, the two sons work as volunteers over at the big air ski jump, but: “We didn’t need the Olympics here.”

How often he would receive support in northern Italy. Who needs winter games? Certainly not the Milanese, they are already one of the most prosperous cities in Europe, their latent disinterest speaks volumes. In Bormio they were also happy with their status as an important World Cup location; in Val di Fiemme they urgently needed snow, even more than more cross-country skiing competitions. In Antholz they would probably contradict Matteo and of course in Cortina d’Ampezzo. They love winter sports there so much that they would like to host the games on their own every four years. But that’s no longer possible, so at some point Livigno also had the honor. Where jumps were built that were supposed to be an opportunity. But hardly anyone here in the valley sees the bigger picture of the games.

Contrary to all promises, major investments were made in Livigno, in a halfpipe and a mogul slope and an 80 meter high big air tower. The entire slope was dug up, and down in the village there is a detailed protest exhibition documenting all the work. A carved wooden figure sits in the shop window with its head in its hands.

Party every evening with people from all over the world. Livigno feels like a true Olympic venue

But is it really all that bad? Or doesn’t an Alpine village really enjoy looking the other way and ignoring what’s happening in front of their eyes – while the rest of the world is watching? Livigno may not be home to shopping tourists, but it is the future of Olympic winter sports.

What a party, under the lights every night! Not just in the snow park and over at Miky’s Disco Club, where the biggest après-ski hits of the past decades are played and you can get a pretty good view of the big air competitions with a beer in your hand without paying admission. Livigno also feels like a real Olympic place where the whole world comes together. Not just the Alpine countries for an internal competition that masquerades as a global event.

Of course there are Austrians, Swiss, French, Germans and Italians there, but also so many more. Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese parade through town and meet Brits, Americans, Canadians, Czechs and Bulgarians cheering on their medal winners. Only in Livigno has a haka, a Maōri war dance, been performed at these games in honor of the New Zealand snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who won silver on the big air jump. And only here can you shout “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” in a crowd of complete strangers. shout and “Oi, oi, oi!” received in response.

The Australians are perhaps the best example of the change that Livigno is experiencing in these weeks traders to mates and brosthat’s what everyone here is suddenly called. At Miky’s, for example, there is a slide that leads to the party cellar, and since the middle weekend of the games, the whole of Australia has known about it: TV was a guest here because the most successful Olympic team that Australia has ever sent to the Winter Games was celebrating down there. The freestylers won three golds and one silver in various disciplines.

Of course, that doesn’t guarantee that people from Perth and Brisbane will soon be making the pilgrimage up the Valetellina to buy perfume. But on the other hand, can all this attention really do any harm?

It’s also not the case that the athletes and their supporters move through the town and leave a trail of destruction behind them like the hooligans at soccer tournaments. Rather, you can find their traces in the snow: the ski area may be empty, but the local snow park is not. “Zoi and I once went snowboarding over at the ski resort,” said snowboarder Anna Gasser a few days ago: “They are also part of our community.” The freestyler community takes off on jumps, but is otherwise remarkably down-to-earth and approachable. Representing this, a sign next to the entrance to the New Zealand House, which is actually the Hotel Krone in the middle of town, reads “Haere Mai!” – “Come in!”, in Te Reo Maōri.

This culture is mandatory for freestylers; here, people cultivate remarkable enthusiasm for one another more than ever. Somehow it’s not just about winning in freestyle, it’s about the so-called “vibe”, as Zoi Sadowski-Synnott put it, inadvertently quoting the Olympic motto “It’s a vibe”. This was thought up by a marketing department and became reality in Livigno.

Social media is transporting the Olympic flair to Asia, America and Australia

And of course all the freestyle athletes bring their cell phones and their accounts and with them the whole world. American female snowboarders make vlogs from the pool in the Olympic Village. Eileen Gu greets her 2.3 million followers on Instagram with a rice cooker from her hotel. Halfpipe artist Scotty James hung his silver medal around the neck of a little boy named Felix and told him to please win one for himself one day. All of this is documented digitally and reaches people who find these stories good. Even if they may not have much to do with winter sports.

You can now dismiss this as an interference with the identity of a place, like Matteo and many other critics who are already worried that this will all happen again in 2028, when the Youth Olympic Games come to Livigno. A compromise would be possible if both sides weren’t so stubborn. You don’t have to declare the entire region a no-drive zone, but you also don’t have to dismiss the Chinese with their own food as unwanted guests. Why not buy some perfume and let others win medals?

Speaking of which: The Olympic perfumeyou can still find traces of it. On Thursday evening, at the halfpipe: Snoop Dogg is there, the self-confessed marijuana lover, but that is also a smell that is not in the air anywhere in Livigno, doping laws also have to be adhered to by free spirits. Instead, snow falls here under floodlights, in the cold, wintry Alpine air at just over 2000 meters.

You actually can’t smell frozen water. But in this place, where the games sometimes feel almost childishly naive like a celebration, there is a clear, fresh smell in the air. That’s why you can’t shake the feeling, with all the real snow, the happy athletes and the spectators from all over the world: The Winter Olympics should actually feel something like the one in Livigno.