Milano Cortina 2026 — Gabriel Lupi

Milano
Cortina 2026.

Victory Ceremonies Cluster Manager for the Cortina cluster. Four venues. Sixty ceremonies. Three hundred medals. One standard — invisible systems for visible moments.

Olympic Games Paralympic Games Cluster Management IOC/IPC Protocol Cortina d'Ampezzo

Phase 02 / 03 — The Olympics

Senior operational authority across the full Cortina cluster.

Led and managed Victory Ceremonies operations across four competition venues, three sports, and 20 Olympic medal ceremonies. I was the senior operational authority between the VC General Planner and the four Venue Coordinators reporting to me.

Managed delivery schedules for medals, gifts, podiums, flags, trays and costumes. Supervised and trained venue teams, implemented IOC/IPC protocol, coordinated the Italian Ministry of Defence flag teams, and held daily cross-functional comms with SPP, Protocol, Sport, Logistics, OBS, and IOC/IPC representatives. Accountable from the first lockdown through the Closing Ceremony.

Olympic ceremonies across 3 cluster venues.

138

Olympic medals managed in Cortina.

Direct-report VC Venue Coordinators.

Phase 03 / 03 — The Paralympics

Dual role — held cluster authority, stepped hands-on into CCU.

During the Paralympic Games I kept Cluster Manager responsibilities and stepped directly into the CCU Venue Coordinator role — running the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium operation hands-on. The dual positioning let me hold cluster-level oversight while personally managing the highest-complexity Paralympic ceremonies in Cortina.

Wheelchair Curling at CCU was operationally distinct from the Olympic version: mixed doubles and mixed teams required specific podium configurations with wheelchair-accessibility ramps, adapted staging protocols, and different timing windows. Officially listed as the primary contact in MICO26's Paralympic medal delivery system.

Paralympic ceremonies across 4 venues.

165

Paralympic medals managed in Cortina.

CCU Wheelchair Curling ceremonies personally coordinated.

Phase 01 / 03 — Build-up

First person in. Three months building the invisible system.

First member of the Cortina VC cluster on the ground in Italy — 1 November 2025, three months before Games-time. The pre-Games window was as operationally intense as the Games themselves: built the cluster's operational framework, produced the Victory Ceremonies Operational Manual distributed across MICO26, developed venue choreography documents, coordinated delivery schedules, and led the training programme for the local Italian team.

Training the Cortina cast — tray bearers, athlete leaders, presenter leaders and flag teams — across four venues meant translating IOC/IPC protocol into rehearsable movements, building contingency procedures into muscle memory, and ensuring a team that had never worked together could perform flawlessly under global broadcast. The framework built in these months was what made Games-time possible.

3 mo

Build-up on the ground in Italy before Games-time.

Pages — VC Operational Manual authored.

Venue choreography documents produced.

Invisible systems for visible moments.

The athlete on the podium shouldn't think about logistics. The anthem should feel inevitable. The flags should rise as though they've always known when to stop. That is what a Victory Ceremony looks like when it works — and it only works because an invisible system underneath is running perfectly.

Building that system — across four venues, two Games editions, twelve medal sports, sixty ceremonies — was the work. From the first delivery window in February to the final Paralympic ceremony in March, every element was pre-planned, rehearsed, and backed by a documented contingency.

Back-to-back staging

At CSC, multiple ceremonies per session required pre-staging all trays, flags and podiums simultaneously in back-of-house — compressing broadcast gaps to seconds, not minutes.

DIPAC contingency protocol

CCU was the official MICO26 backup for all Cortina outdoor ceremonies. If weather prevented delivery at CAL or CSB, ceremonies moved to CCU. The team held dual readiness throughout.

IOC/IPC script compliance

Every ceremony ran on a numbered cue sheet — 20+ cues, three languages, synchronised across announcer, DJ, flag team, tray bearers, athlete leaders and OBS. Zero improvisation.

303 medals delivered. Every one exactly right.

Each Olympic medal at Milano Cortina 2026 was engraved with the event name. There is no substitution. There is no "close enough." The medal in the tray bearer's hands — on the tray she has been trained to hold perfectly level — is the only one that exists for that moment.

The flag identification system — white strap with a three-letter NOC code and an orientation arrow — was designed to make the right choice obvious and the wrong choice almost impossible. Flag quantities per venue were SEQ-calculated with backup formulas. Delivery windows compressed from 15 days to 24 hours as Games-time approached.

Over 2,200 flags were used across the Games. At least 303 of them flew at our four venues. Each one raised by a military team I had trained, on a system I had overseen, to mark a moment no athlete forgets.

5 min

Average ceremony duration — window with no margin for error.

Functional areas coordinated per ceremony (SPP, PRT, SPT, LOG, OBS, DOP, BRS, TEC, EVM).

Languages — every announcement: French, English, Italian.

Milano
Cortina 2026.

Senior operational authority across the full Cortina cluster.

Dual role — held cluster authority, stepped hands-on into CCU.

First person in. Three months building the invisible system.

Invisible systems for visible moments.

303 medals delivered. Every one exactly right.

Six Games. Twenty years. One operator.