The Pinerolo Palazzo del Ghiaccio complex where the curling competition will be held during the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games has been inaugurated. The facility is spread over 6,000 square metres and cost 14 million euros to transform an older sports complex into this facility. The curling track is 60 metres long by 40 metres wide and houses 3,000 spectators. It is now being tested at the Junior Curling World Championships being held between March 3 to 13 and an international disabled tournament March 15-17. After the Olympics the venue will become an ice sport complex. Thirty one venues or more than half of the facilities have been completed ahead of the 2006 Games.
Turin 2006 Deputy Vice President Evelina Christillin announced that 10,000 volunteers have been selected for the Turin 2006 Games. Thirty thousand applications have been received to date and it’s expected that there will be as many as 45,000 applications. Volunteers include 20 children between the ages of 6 and 12, and the oldest volunteer is 84 years of age. Applications will be accepted until the summer. Fifty-seven per cent of applicants were women and 43 per cent were men.
Work has started on widening the stretch of State Highway 24 between Cesana Torinese-Claviere to enable traffic to flow more easily during the 2006 Games. The project will cost 107.5 million euros and will open in the next few weeks.
Turin 2006 organizers have replaced their chief executive officer Paolo Rota and have appointed Cesare Vaciago as the new CEO and Luciano Barro as deputy CEO. TOROC president Valentino Castellani said, “this decision has been taken following divisions that have occurred within the organization in these past months that have created a situation of serious operational difficulty, and for which it is our duty to find an immediate solution”.
