Written by Mark Payne
2026/02/09
The Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics are set to begin this week. It is hard to believe it has been 18 years since my Olympic trip to Italy. It was an adventure I will never forget. I covered the Games as an independent journalist for NewCap Radio online. Looking back, the idea is now how many reporters cover events but at the time I was ahead of the curve and out of my league.
The first Winter I lived in Calgary was 1988. They literally ran the torch past my neighborhood in Kelvin Grove. That moment lite a lifelong passion for the Olympic Winter Games. My Dad took me to Ski Jumping at Canada Olympic Park and since it was windy they had to reschedule so I missed two days of school. On the second day the wind picked up again and they had to complete the jumps on a third and final day. My teacher actually called my mom to in fact confirm I was missing a third day of school for the same event.
My Uncle Doug Payne has a lengthy history of the Games as a set designer for CBC. He was involved in set design from 1992 in Albertville all the way until 2002 in Salt Lake City. Along with the Winter Games, he worked at the Olympic Summer Games and Commonwealth Games during the same period. As much as I enjoyed other sports, it has always been hockey for the Alberta Paynes. When I had a chance to join him as a runner for CBC in Utah, I jumped at the opportunity.
My journey to Tuin was different. I was on my own and wasn’t part of a network crew. I remember a cab dropped me off in front of two large doors on one of the main streets of Torino. This would be my home for the next two weeks; I had no idea what I was in store for. To say I overpacked for the Games would be an understatement. I lugged two large suitcases up four sets of stairs in a building older than anything I had even seen.
It was a small flat, I spoke no Italian and it took me a week before I knew my roommates were friends not a couple. Since I was working for an independent station, I didn’t have the budget of network television to work with, so I decided to stay with a local instead of the media village. It was the best part of the experience.
Alyssia Baggio & Ricardo became my tour guides and friends for the next weeks. Ricardo was a student and an avid soccer fan devoted to Torino FC. While Alyssia was also student and artist who seemed to be working multiple jobs including a role with the Italian Olympic team as an ambassador. A title she surely lived up too.
Alyssia took me to a private event at Italia House on her one night off; it was like a club in a historical building lit up with luxury vehicles lining the driveway like a scene in a James Bond movie. I will never forget looking across the room at what looked like a group of hockey players. Instead, it was the 2006 World Cup Team, Forza Italia. I am sure my expression was the same as athletes who are catching a glimpse of Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby this week at the Athletes Village. Buffon, Roberto Baggio and Juventus star Del Piero were all in attendance.
On the final weekend my roommates hosted dinner with their friends and served homemade gnocchi and red wine. They were amazing hosts and some of the most passionate and energetic people I have ever met. True Italians!
While I had always dreamed of a career as a sports reporter and storyteller, it actually was the beginning of a career in food and beverages; not just sports. Next door there was a coffee shop called ‘Carpe Diem’. Italian businessmen would enter the cafe, take a shot of espresso, pay and leave. I had never seen something so efficient. The irony was it was the only thing Italians were in a hurry to get done I would soon find out.
Locals would take breaks mid-day and party well into the night throughout the Games, and I marveled at the groups and families of all ages that lined the streets nightly. It was simply electric. Ironically, in a city that was known as an industrial center that included the main FIAT factory.
One day I took a train to what must have been and an hour in the wrong direction. Another day I sat in a restaurant with my back to the wall and consumed the best pasta I have ever had watching some of the most vibrant conversations in a foreign language. In the end I remember the meals more than the hockey scores.
One such meal was on the go to cover a hockey game. I was eating Napolitan style pizza while Czech fans walked up to the arena ahead of me. The group of fans were likely NHL wives. They were wearing high heels and jeans dressed in Hasek and Jagr jerseys. As they turned to look back, the hot cheese slid off the slice and burned my mouth. It was embarrassing to say the least and my Czech was as fluent as my Italian.
One afternoon I traveled to see a Juventus soccer game only to be locked out. If you didn’t arrive by game time, they simply locked the stadium. It looked more like a prison than a Football Stadium and was way outside the city square I had been calling home.
While the Canadian Women’s Hockey team led by Cassie Campbell and Hayley Wickenheiser struck gold the journey for the Men’s team was not as memorable. The team finished 7th in 2006. A nineteen-year Rick Nash walked by me on the streets and it hardly was a memorable moment for an avid Canadian hockey fan.
Over last month there has been much speculation about the Ice Hockey venues construction woes which for someone who had covered an Italian Olympics was quite entertaining. Mostly because it was the same in 2006. I can remember the stadium being covered in dry wall dust when it first opened, and that was very plain in comparison to facilities in North America.
Meanwhile, the second rink was based inside a conference center. The game I recalled from that secondary location was when Canada lost 2-0 to Switzerland on the back of a shutout from Martin Gerber who was the backup in Carolina that season. The two facilities were called the Torino Palasport Olimpico and the Torino Esposizioni, neither were very memorable.
After the Winter Olympics I left Torino to start another European adventure. My old buddy Micki DuPont was in the early stages of his career with Eisbairen Berlin in the DEL so I made my way by train to watch him play. His wife Erin picked me up in a branded Volvo, the young couple was expecting their first son Nolan who today plays in the BCHL and won the Centennial Cup last season with the Calgary Canucks.
The atmosphere, people, and experience in Europe is what I will always remember. And with NHL players returning to the Winter Olympics, the hype is real. I know the format so well that I feel like I am at the Games, but I have to admit I had to look up who the defending Men’s Ice Hockey Champion was. The answer was Team Finland.
While the two Scandinavian hockey powers Sweden and Finland faced off in the 2006 Olympic Final, I was already up the mountain in the Italian Alps enjoying the Après Ski Experience.
As a young sports reporter it was the trip of a lifetime and twenty years later, I am more of then excited to reflect and to be a hockey fan watching the entire experience unfold online. On the eve of another chapter in Men’s hockey, I wish the next generation of Italians, journalists and athletes another great Olympics! Ciao Bella.
Let’s Go Canada!