60 athletes to test Cortina's controversial Olympic sliding track next week

The track's essential structure is done. The ice is being prepared. And next week, 60 athletes are slated to test the controversial sliding centre for next year's Milan-Cortina Olympics.

"The track's structure is done. We had it in our calendars to finish by March 16 and that's when it was finished," Fabio Saldini, the government commissioner in charge of rebuilding the century-old track in Cortina d'Ampezzo, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Construction workers celebrated Sunday's milestone by laying down a branch of an evergreen tree across the track.

"The tree branch represents a starting point, like when [bobsled] teams get ready to push off before launching themselves down the track," said Luca Zaia, president of the Veneto region that includes Cortina. "I hope that the enthusiasm builds minute by minute in a crescendo worthy of an event of this magnitude."

Twenty workers preparing ice on the track day and night are slated to finish by Sunday.

Then starting on Monday, bobsled, luge and skeleton athletes will perform test runs in order to secure preliminary certification, homologation is the technical word, for the track. Also coming are 26 coaches, plus officials from the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, International Luge Federation, and the International Olympic Committee.

Even preliminary approval would go a long way toward avoiding a backup Plan B option the IOC had demanded and which would require moving the three sliding sports all the way to Lake Placid, N.Y., if the track in Italy wasn't finished in time.

"As of today, 50 per cent of the ice is ready," Saldini said. "We had some trouble last week due to high temperatures, rain and snow. But then we covered the track with nets and yesterday we actually put down too much ice."

Security has been increased around the track since a refrigeration tube was removed and placed across a road in a reported act of sabotage last month, according to the government agency, Simico.

Besides the sliding events, Cortina will also host women's alpine skiing and curling during the Winter Games.

Pre-fabricated mobile homes that will host up to 1,400 athletes in an athletes' village in Cortina are being put in place this month. The mobile homes will also be used for athletes during the Paralympics.