Hosting the 2006 Winter Olympics is a feather in Torino’s alpine cap! It’s hard to describe the electricity of enthusiasm and excitement that infects a city hosting the Olympics, but I had the delightful opportunity of doing just that when Salt Lake City hosted them in February 2002. Virtually everyone comes alive and joins the party—like a two week Mardi Gras that will descend upon the city February 10-26, 2006.

When I visited Torino in 1998, I had the good fortune of performing on stage at Lingotto—the amazing Fiat plant-turned-civic-center. What a venue! The seats in the audience are covered in fine Italian suede. The acoustics are fantastic. And the building is unique: a hotel and ballrooms on the ground floor, and a mall on the second floor, a concert hall that takes up half the second and third floors. The top of the building – get this – is a heliport surrounded by an auto racing track! The track was once used as a test track for Fiat. Since I was there, three floors have been added to the structure, completing its renovation. Stay tuned to the Olympics, because I can’t imagine that this one-of-a-kind building, although not a sporting venue, will escape the media’s notice.

Enough about Fiat. Check out the Olympic Curling competition—it became my favorite winter sport in 2002. If you’ve never seen it, you may be as spellbound as my family was during the last Olympics!

• Torino 2006
• Olympic Curling
• Cool things you need to know about Curling et al
• More on Turin/Torino, Italy (PDF)

By guest writer Kathleen A.