Cold wars IOC struggles to keep politics out of Winter Games

A short stroll from where the grandees of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are staying in Milan sits the Museum of Illusions - a place devoted to magic and misdirection.

- Sean Ingle Milan

Mirrors distort. Perspectives shift. And nothing is quite what it seems.

It is an apposite metaphor for these Winter Olympics, which begin in Italy tomorrow.

Over the following 16 days, the world will be enraptured by the dazzle and spin of these Games: downhill skiers bombing down mountains at 95mph, snowboarders twirling like gyroscopes, the balletic grace of the world's best skaters. But in Milano Cortina a fresh cold war is brewing amid global political chaos.

This week, the IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, called for sport "to be a neutral ground", separate from politics and the actions of governments. It was a worthy sentiment. But she might as well have been singing kumbaya in a warzone.

While Coventry spoke, US Olympic officials changed the name of a Milan athlete hospitality space from "Ice House" to "Winter House," following protests over the fatal shootings in Minneapolis by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

It was a move welcomed by the American figure skater Amber Glenn, who told reporters: "It's unfortunate that the term 'ice' isn't something we can embrace because of what is happening, and the implications of what some people are doing." Less than 24 hours later, Italy's foreign minister also revealed the country had thwarted a series of cyber-attacks "of Russian origin" targeting websites linked to the Winter Olympics.

That revelation was even more noteworthy for another reason.

Over the past few days there has been strong momentum in Milan for Russian teams, banned since the start of the war in Ukraine, to be allowed back into the sporting fold.