Latest Turin Stories

By Larry Fine NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. figure skating champion Sasha Cohen aims to win her first major international gold medal at next week's world championships and then evaluate opportunities beyond skating, including an acting career. Olympic silver medalist Cohen, runner-up the past two world championships, is clear favorite in Calgary as Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa of Japan and 2005 world champion Irina Slutskaya of Russia, Turin's bronze medalist, are absent. "I want a...

By Mark Ledsom BERN, Switzerland (Reuters) - Walter Mayer, the banned coach whose presence at the Turin Winter Olympics sparked doping raids on the Austrian biathlon and cross-country teams, is continuing to fight plans to prosecute him in Italy. Mayer's lawyer Herwig Hasslacher said on Wednesday he was appealing against a second indictment brought against his client by the Turin prosecutors' office, basing his argument on the fact that doping was not a criminal offence in Austria,...

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLO (Reuters) - Future Winter Olympic organizers should follow Turin's example and stage as many events as possible in cities to help protect the environment in mountain areas, a U.N. agency said on Wednesday.The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) also urged better recycling of sports venues, suggesting that the 2010 Games in Canada's Vancouver could re-use a bobsleigh run built for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, about 670 km (415 miles) to the...

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Future Winter Olympic organizers should follow Turin's example and stage as many events as possible in cities to help protect the environment in mountain areas, a U.N. agency said on Wednesday. The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) also urged better recycling of sports venues, suggesting that the 2010 Games in Canada's Vancouver could re-use a bobsleigh run built for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, about 670 km (415 miles) to the...

By Simon Evans TURIN (Reuters) - The medals have all been won and the flame has been put out but on Monday Turin was dealing with the final challenge of the Winter Olympics -- getting thousands of people out of the city and on their way home. Around 20,000 people -- athletes, officials, fans and the media -- were heading out of the city's Caselle airport after Sunday's closing ceremony ended the 20th Winter Games. "Everything is going smoothly, we are handing out small radios to...

By Nick Mulvenney BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials have just 170 days to digest what they learned at the Turin Winter Games before the arrival of athletes for the first test event for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. China is leaving nothing to chance as the biggest economic story of the early 21st century prepares to welcome the world to its coming out party, a gala the Communist Party hopes will strengthen support for its rule. Not for Beijing the construction delays,...

By Rachel Sanderson TURIN (Reuters) - The best indication of Italy's reaction to the Turin Winter Olympics came by way of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. For the media tycoon and owner of AC Milan football club, the biggest sports story of the past three weeks was nothing to do with the Games. Berlusconi, facing a general election in April and with a keen eye for what moves the Italian public, failed to make it to Turin until the closing ceremony. But he had no problem...

By Jane Barrett TURIN (Reuters) - Before the Winter Olympics, most of Turin griped about the Games -- the traffic chaos while a new subway was built, the dust from building sites, the sense that those millions would be better spent on them than on sport. By the time the skating and skiing ended, however, many had been won over by the Olympic spirit and hoped that 16 days in the international spotlight would translate into great things for a depressed city. For the last century, Turin's...

By Alan Baldwin TURIN (Reuters) - Hermann Maier was billed as Austria's headline maker at the Turin Olympics. Nobody bargained for Walter Mayer. As at the Athens summer Games two years ago, an extraordinary saga straight from the pages of a crime thriller distracted attention from the sporting spectacle. While the world's winter athletes played out their dreams on snow and ice, the unwelcome presence of banned Austrian cross-country coach Mayer triggered a doping furor that refused to...

TURIN (Reuters) - International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge closed the 20th Winter Olympics in Turin on Sunday at a ceremony celebrating the Italian tradition of carnival. "I declare the 20th Olympic Winter Games closed and I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now in Vancouver to celebrate the 21st Olympic Winter Games," Rogge told thousands of spectators in Turin's Olympic Stadium.