Milan Cortina 2026, 4 flag bearers chosen: there's Federica Brignone

CONI President Luciano Buonfiglio has announced the four flag bearers for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics: it will be Federica Brignone, Arianna Fontana, Amos Mosaner and Federico Pellegrino who will represent Italy in the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, scheduled for Feb. 6, in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The Winter Olympics returns to Italy after 20 years and already enters the history of the Olympic movement: for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, in fact, a country will deploy four athletes as standard-bearers in the Opening Ceremony: an absolute record that makes CONI’s choice unique in the five-circle panorama.

Luca Giorgetti

Never, to date, had Italy fielded a pair of athletes in the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games; never had any country entrusted its flag to four athletes; never to parade with the Tricolor at the Winter Olympics was an athlete from the Fiamme Oro; nor had it ever been an athlete born in Valle d’Aosta; just as it had never been an athlete born in Trentino; and yet: an athlete born in the Italian city hosting the Games (Summer or Winter) had never been a flag-bearer. In addition, never had a member of the CONI National Council; nor a curling athlete; nor a “daughter of art” competing in the same discipline as her mother or father; just as never, until now, had an Italian woman athlete been chosen twice as flag bearer.

Four unique stories that will intertwine in a unique context: never had an Opening Ceremony been held in two different venues, an expression of the widespread soul of the Milan Cortina 2026 Games. Specifically, Fontana and Pellegrino will parade at the San Siro Stadium, while Brignone and Mosaner in Cortina, in the ‘Pearl of the Dolomites’. The daughter of art, born in the city of the Games is actually Federica Brignone. The ‘Tiger of La Salle,’ multiple Olympic medalist in alpine skiing at PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022, the first ever Azzurra to conquer the Crystal Ball, has already accomplished the feat by returning to skiing after her tibial plateau and fibula head injury suffered last April. The Azzurra will parade in Cortina together with Amos Mosaner, Olympic curling champion in Beijing 2022 and world champion in mixed doubles, and now the first from Trentino to become an Azzurro standard bearer.

In Milan, on the other hand, it will be the turn of multi-time Olympic short track champion Arianna Fontana, the most medaled Italian athlete in Olympic history (11 podiums), who will add to her string of records (with bronze in Turin 2006 at 15 years and 10 months she became the youngest Italian Olympic medalist) that of being the first Italian to parade twice with the Tricolor. Until now, in fact, only Ugo Frigerio (athletics), Edoardo Mangiarotti (fencing), Gustav Thoeni (alpine skiing) and Paul Hildgartner (luge) had had this privilege.

Milan’s other standard-bearer is another winter sports icon such as Federico Pellegrino, the leading man of tricolor cross-country skiing, a two-time silver medalist in PyeongChang and Beijing, winner of two Crystal Spheres and the first Gold Flames athlete and member of the National Council in athlete quota to be chosen as standard-bearer.