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A construction site guard died during a freezing night shift near the 2026 Winter Olympics venue in Cortina d’Ampezzo, authorities confirmed on Saturday.
The 55-year-old worker died on Thursday night at a site near the Cortina ice rink, prompting Italy’s Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini to call for a full investigation into the incident.
Italian media reported that temperatures plummeted to -12 degrees Celsius (10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) during the shift.
Milan Cortina organizers said the worker suffered a heart attack.
“The information we have is that it was a natural death, a heart attack. We are investigating,” Andrea Varnier, chief executive of Milan’s Cortina 2026 Foundation, said at the Test event for new hockey arena In Milan.
“All the documents we have are complete. We are awaiting an investigation to find out what the cause was. At the moment, the information we have from the emergency services is that it was a death from natural causes… and he was at the scene at the time,” Varnier said.
Cortina d’Ampezzo map:
Heavy snow, high winds and icy roads made travel difficult in parts of Europe last week.
In Germany, rail operator Deutsche Bahn closed all services in the country’s north on Friday due to heavy snow, and train passengers continued to experience lengthy delays and cancellations on Sunday.
In the Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania, drivers were asked to postpone all non-essential travel in anticipation of blizzards, while neighboring Latvia issued a snow warning for the west of the country.
The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place from February 6 to 22.
In a statement expressing condolences, the company said the construction site was not overseen by Simico, the government company responsible for Olympic infrastructure.
Cortina city officials said they were “deeply saddened and troubled by the death.”
Cortina will host curling, ice skating and women’s alpine skiing competitions.