Humid Milan weather is presenting a unique challenge for Canadian ice-making maestro Mark Messer just weeks before the 2026 Winter Olympics. With an outdoor temperature of 7 C and damp conditions, the chief icemaker from Calgary identified moisture as his primary foe as he prepared the speed-skating oval in the city's Rho suburb.
The Battle Against Humidity and Frost
"Humidity is our enemy," Messer stated, walking in the drizzle near the temporary venue. He explained that humidity creates frost on the ice surface, similar to frost on a car window, which would disastrously slow down elite skaters who have trained for years for this moment. For speed skating, the ice must be mirror-smooth and exceptionally hard—harder than hockey ice and significantly harder than figure-skating ice, which requires some cushioning for jumps.
This is Messer's seventh Winter Games, but he calls it his "biggest Olympic ice-making challenge." He brings four decades of experience, and his son, an ice-making engineer for the NHL's Edmonton Oilers, will join him to operate the ice-surfacing machine during the Games. They are part of a contingent of Canadian ice experts working across Olympic venues in Italy.
Pop-Up Venues and Tight Timelines
The Milano Speed Skating Stadium itself is a historic first: the inaugural indoor temporary speed-skating oval built for an Olympics. Housed inside exhibition pavilions at a former trade fair site, the venue will revert to hosting design fairs after the Games. Creating competition-grade ice here is a complex venture involving insulation, precise water purification, and careful thickness control.
Messer measured the ice at five centimetres thick, planning to add layers to reach an ideal 5.5 to six centimetres—thick enough to support a Zamboni without cracking, but not so thick it becomes difficult to cool uniformly. With only one junior World Cup event as a test, the team is racing to find the perfect formula. "We'll make it happen because it has to happen," Messer affirmed.
Hockey Ice Amidst Construction Chaos
For Don Moffatt from Peterborough, Ontario, the chief icemaker for the two Olympic hockey arenas in Milan, this is the hardest of the five Olympics he's worked. One arena, the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, remains an active construction site. The ice Moffatt installed for a test event is now dirty, walked on by workers installing score clocks and scaffolding.
"There have been days when you just want to bang something," Moffatt admitted, but he maintains his calm. Once construction finishes, he will shave down the muddy ice, repaint it white, and apply hockey markings and Olympic logos. Despite the chaos, he is "100 per cent confident" the ice will be top quality for the highly anticipated hockey tournament, which marks the return of NHL athletes to the Olympics since 2014.
Moffatt judges ice quality by sound, skate marks, and how pucks react. "I've got the best seat in the house," he said, noting he watches from the Zamboni gate.
Curling on Historic Ice in the Dolomites
Meanwhile, in the mountain cluster of Cortina d'Ampezzo, about 400 kilometres from Milan, Greg Ewasko from Oakbank, Manitoba, prepares for his first Games as deputy ice technician for curling. The venue, the Cortina Olympic Curling Stadium, was originally built for the 1956 Winter Games and has been renovated for 2026.
Here, the challenge is controlling the climate in an older building surrounded by the snow-capped Dolomites. Icemakers must anticipate how the body heat of thousands of fans will raise the temperature and potentially cause frost, altering stone movement. They meticulously maintain the ice by shaving and "repebbling" it to control speed and curl. "You want a 40-pound rock to land within one centimetre of the pinhole," Ewasko explained, emphasizing the precision required.
From the humidity in Milan's temporary oval to the construction dust in hockey arenas and the historic halls of Cortina, Canada's ice-making veterans are applying decades of global experience to ensure the Olympic stage is perfectly set for the world's best winter athletes.
