Milano Cortina 2026 could become a case study of a “new era of the Games,” in which the event adapts to territories, activates investments that are already planned, generates skills, and produces a legacy that can be measured over time. The Olympic and Paralympic Games should be understood as a structural platform for value creation, not as an exceptional event or a cost to be justified after the fact, Dino Ruta argues in his book Colori olimpici. Lo sport e i Giochi come scintilla di benessere e sviluppo (Olympic colors. Sport and the Games as a spark for well-being and development, available only in Italian, EGEA, 2025, Foreword by Kirsty Coventry, Afterword by Andrea Abodi).
From the author’s perspective, the Games are the engine of transformation and the spark that accelerates economic, social, and cultural processes already under way, redefining the relationship between sport, institutions, businesses, and local communities.
The structure of the book coherently reflects this systemic ambition. After the foreword by IOC President Kirsty Coventry and an opening dialogue between Giovanni Malagò and Francesco Billari, which places sport at the crossroads of culture, education, and public policy, the volume is organized into six thematic chapters, each associated with an Olympic color and an action verb: invest, support, win, build, grow, impact. Each chapter combines economic analysis, international case studies, and data with a precise narrative choice: it closes with an interview. In the chapter dedicated to investments, Giuseppe De Bellis and Andrea Varnier are in conversation; in the chapter on fandom, Carlo Ancelotti and Javier Zanetti; in the one on winning, Federica Brignone and Deborah Compagnoni; in the chapter on infrastructure, Luciano Buonfiglio and Stefano Domenicali; in the one on values and growth, Anna Danesi and Sasha Djordjevic, followed by Martina Caironi and Federica Pellegrini; finally, in the chapter on impacts and legacy, Diana Bianchedi and Marie Sallois. The volume concludes with the afterword by the Italian Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi.
The result is a multi-voiced book, constructed as a map of the contemporary sports world, in which managerial, institutional, and athletic perspectives intertwine.
Already in the introduction, which precedes the thematic chapters, a key reflection emerges: Olympism as a civic competence even before a sporting one. Tracing the thought of de Coubertin and the evolution of the Games, Ruta insists on the educational value of sport as a school of life, a training ground for human capital, and a universal language capable of uniting generations and territories. This historical and cultural framework merges with a fully contemporary reading of the sports industry as a complex ecosystem, in which business, media, infrastructure, sustainability, and governance coexist.
Sport is one of the central languages of the global entertainment economy, but also a field in which delicate balances are at stake between the creation of economic value and the protection of collective values.
For these reasons, Colori olimpici is a particularly useful book for managers, policymakers, investors, students of economics and management, as well as for those working in the world of major events, infrastructure, and public policy. It is neither a celebratory text nor a technical manual, but an interpretive guide that helps explain why sport is today a strategic lever of territorial development and why the real challenge is not “hosting the Games,” but governing their legacy. In view of Milano Cortina 2026, the volume thus offers a solid interpretive key for thinking about sport as a long-term investment and as the social infrastructure of the future.
- Publisher: EGEA
- Publication date: 2025
- ISBN/EAN: 9791222930534
- Pages: 256
- Format: print, E-Pub.
DINO RUTA is Rector’s Delegate for the Olympic Movement at Bocconi University in Milan and Professor of Practice in Leadership, Sports & Events Business at SDA Bocconi School of Management, where he is also Director of the Sport & Entertainment Knowledge Center, the FIFA Master, and the Executive Master in Business of Events (in collaboration with Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026). He is also an Affiliate Professor of International Sports Management at Columbia University in New York. Since 2024, he has been the coordinator of the OECD-IOC project Impacts and Legacy of Milano Cortina 2026.
