Balich, the Leonardo of emotions, is waiting for her.
The Torch from Ancient Olympia to Italy: it sets off from Rome to reach the San Siro temple and reawaken currently lukewarm minds with Milano Cortina 2026. At the Scala of football, it will be up to the Games Ceremony to ignite the strongest emotions and inspire a sense of belonging in the country hosting the Olympics. As usual, the prophet of the sensations experienced by the audience of two billion people will take care of this. It's been like this since the days of Pink Floyd in Venice...
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Brief introductory note: the Olympic Torch (also known as the Olympic Flame, ed.) is the means of transporting the Olympic Flame during the relay that carries it from the place of lighting (usually Olympia, Greece) to the place where the Olympic Games are celebrated.
The modern Olympics have been held since 1896. The relay was first held in Berlin in 1936, the 11th edition, and has become a ritual.
For the 2026 Winter Games, the Torch set off from Ancient Olympia on November 26, 2025, with the lighting ceremony, and then "went on its way"—we use quotation marks because it will also be carried on planes and ships—to Kalavrita, Karpenisi, Metsovo, Kostaria, Naoussa, Thessaloniki, Lamia, the Acropolis, and Athens, Greece. On December 4, it was handed over to the Italians, who chose to relight it on December 6 in Rome, from where it departed for the most popular destinations of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics.
Ahead of it, the Torch has 60 more stops to zigzag to Milan, where it will arrive on February 5th to light the Tripod during the Opening Ceremony at the San Siro Stadium and thus ignite the passion of the entire planet.
Just to satisfy the curiosity of many, we propose the stages planned from Rome to Milan of ... the most intriguing cultural tour of the coming period: with images of the always fascinating Vestal Virgins of Olympia, the Torch will unite with an unparalleled common thread the Capital to Viterbo, Terni, Perugia, Siena, Florence, Livorno, Nuoro, Cagliari, Palermo, Agrigento, Syracuse, Catania, Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro, Salerno, Pompeii, Naples, Latina, Benevento, Potenza, Taranto, Lecce, Bari, Campobasso, Pescara, L'Aquila, Ancona, Rimini, Bologna, Ferrara, Parma, Genoa, Cuneo, Turin, Aosta, Novara, Varese, Pavia, Piacenza, Brescia, Verona, Mantua, Vicenza, Padua, Venice, Trieste, Udine, Belluno, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Bolzano, Cavalese, Trento, Livigno, Sondrio, Lecco, Bergamo, Como, Monza, Milan.
Dear Italians around the world, does your heart beat faster than it did sixty stops ago? It's obvious. City after city, there lie the roots of all (or almost all) those who regard Italy as their beloved nation. There, all the knowledge tied to those roots is consumed. There, even the most fleeting memories chase each other.
You didn't ask why there's the Iron Crown stage rather than the Mille Miglia stage; why the Flame will stop in Nuoro and not Barumini, where the oldest Nuraghe still stands; why Stefania Belmondo's Cuneo has been wedged into the route, while Manuela Di Centa's Paluzza, despite having a certain influence within the CONI and CIO, isn't included; why Valentina Vezzali's Jesi won't be a resounding step; why the City of the Thousand continues to rhyme with that of the Mille Miglia after the happy twinning christened by Culture...
We could go on forever and then it would be demonstrated once and for all how much the media have underestimated the Lighting Ceremony, the Handover Ceremony, and the landing in Rome of the Torch that makes the entire world dream, and yet fails to stimulate the imagination of even the most arid minds.
Filippo Top-Ganna's involvement is being discussed in the cycling community. The tennis world is buzzing about the eagerly awaited Jasmine Paolini match: mind you, we're writing "whispering" with great regret, because the involvement of this pocket-sized player, so rich in modern tennis achievements, could be discussed at length, especially now that Yannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are leaving endless prairies for rivers of ink to flow, having temporarily retired from the public eye to enjoy snatches of vacation in the Maldives and the surrounding area.
Instead: little or nothing. The Torch embroiders a secondary thread. It's a path of the collective imagination, not the highway that should channel the sense of belonging of a nation that will host the Winter Games just twenty years after the previous one (Turin 2006). We don't understand. But we adapt.
Even the buzz about advertising related to the Games, where it's not prohibited, seems like a background soundtrack, not the inflammatory music it would be. The partners of the Milano Cortina 2026 adventure are "regional," one might say from outside Italy. To us, they seem "local," and they're often forced to be there. The reference supermarket isn't widespread throughout the region. The cheese supporting the campaign is mostly local and sourced exclusively from the plains. The trade fair involved is owned by the Milanese municipality, which took half of the event's label, which speaks volumes about the interest (not) shown by other commercial operators. Yes, it's true: there's that soft drink "that has been with Italians for almost a hundred years," but since that brand is everywhere, it would have made more news if it hadn't been there...
In short: a huge responsibility falls on the shoulders of the great communicators called upon to illustrate the upcoming Games. What has happened is no longer enough. But the passion will need to be "ignited" with a decisive push, which will surely come from... Marco Balich, the creator of the Opening Ceremony scheduled for Milan on February 5th. We're talking about the Leonardo da Vinci of emotion, not some amateur commentator or second-rate lobbyist, who have been called upon to take on the role of torchbearer under who knows what miraculous star. Will one of them manage to run 200 meters? Will the other manage to make himself known beyond his immediate family?
The Torch March risks flopping. What a shame. The Opening Ceremony certainly won't be. Balich is a given. He has been for over twenty years. This is evidenced by the 16 ceremonies, including the Olympics, World Championships, Expos, and many others, already consigned to the archives with irrefutable facts, like the little astronaut we saw take flight from the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1984 accompanied by the strains of Lionel Richie's "All Night Long"; like the Tree of Life illuminated at Expo 2015 in Milan, its full 37 meters tall, towering over the Italian Pavilion and making it attractive for miles around.
Those who have "transplanted" highlights of the 2014 Sochi and 2022 Beijing Winter Games to the Salce Collection National Museum in Treviso, thanks also to the Museum of Emigration, know this well. Curator Elisabetta Pasqualin, in a very succinct summary, is explicit: "The key element Marco Balich is focusing on is emotion, a language that manages to speak to all those who follow the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics, an audience of over two billion people."
That's right. Anyone passing through Treviso won't leave the Museum disappointed. And no one will leave San Siro disappointed on February 5th. A few insiders who "knew something" or "met someone" on the sidelines of last fall's rehearsals have already told us this, despite the heavily guarded doors of La Scala del Calcio and, soon, of Milano Cortina 2026.
The certainty that sustains us overshadows the names involved in the various stages of the 60-chapter Rome-Milan march. The Relay restarts in Italy at a time when Italian sport mourns two icons: ninety-two-year-old Nicola Pietrangeli (a tennis player with a lethal backhand, older brother of Adriano Panatta and, with him, a precursor to Sinner) and seventy-two-year-old Mabel Bocchi, the Divina of women's basketball and a feminist, whose life transcended the cultural boundaries of her other teammates, "prisoners of the basketball dream." Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
Along the 12.000-kilometer route, the Torch Flame will illuminate the faces of over 10.000 torchbearers invited to enjoy a special experience and will be part of the Ceremony conceived by Balich for the San Siro Olympic Stadium, which no one calls by the surname of its "owner" Giuseppe Meazza and which was sold off to Inter & Milan to make it the playground of Milan's most successful clubs.
On February 5th, Balich will close a circle we would have liked to be part of at the 2013 Cycling World Championships in Tuscany, with events… spread across Florence, Pistoia, Montecatini, and Lucca. This wasn't possible due to budget constraints. But what a qualitative leap would the International Cycling Union (parent of the World Championships) have made if, for once, it had freed itself from the shackles of cultural immobility that have always beset it? That project for Florence went awry, and the Municipality squandered part of the funds allocated by the Region for the usual things… banners, flags, dinners, etc. What a shame. What remains of that missed opportunity are the studies on Balich, an interpreter of Intercultura as a young man and then a prophet of strong sensations with the Pink Floyd concert outside Piazza San Marco in his native Venice (1989), at the age of 27.
Can you imagine what he would have put together in the shadow of the Lion's bell tower in 2009, at 47 years old, in the midst of his professional growth, when we proposed, thanks to Massimo Cacciari, the presentation of the teams participating in the Centenary Giro d'Italia?…
He succeeded in making us feel good and happy simply because we were participants at that moment even at the opening of the World Cup in Qatar, so far from the Olympics... Imagine if Balich didn't hit the target at San Siro too. The price of the ticket, however high, will be worth the show. Behind that event there is the superhuman commitment of the designer of emotions, who directs 250 super-technicians in the main hubs of the Balich Wonder Studio in Milan, Dubai, New York, Paris and Riyadh. He, capable of feeling at ease in any corner of the world, will be able to amaze once again. The Leonardo of emotions will end up illustrating once again the best version of the country that organizes "its" Games (16) and "its" Events (13).
This time, the task appears more complicated because the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games will be celebrated with a Diffused Ceremony, the first ever in Balich's career. But, in reality, it will be simpler than the one in Turin twenty years ago, thanks to the stratospheric experience he has gained in the field, his ability to capture the key aspects of the "diffuse" moments from Milan to... Cortina, passing through Valtellina and Cadore. And not only that.
Leonardo calls... Leonardo, of course. And we'll be happy to be together once again with someone who knows how to capture the moment and its soul.
It will end with applause: who wants to bet?
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