Olympic athletes ate 1,800 meters of pizza and a ton of Grana Padano cheese

According to Milano Cortina Games Director Andrea Varniero, athletes consumed 365 kilograms of pasta, 10,000 eggs, and drank 8,000 cups of coffee every day during the 16 days of the Winter Olympics.

Every day, up to 4,500 meals were prepared in the Olympic Village in Milan, almost 4,000 in Cortina, and 2,300 in Predazzo. It took about a year to prepare the menus.

The organizers emphasized that, in addition to quantity, the quality of the food was also appreciated. Approximately 1.3 million tickets were sold for the games, representing 88 percent of capacity. Of the spectators, 37 percent were from Italy and 63 percent from abroad, mainly from Germany, the US, Britain, and Switzerland.

The most popular disciplines included ski mountaineering, speed skating, figure skating, and ice hockey. The Olympic flame in Milan attracted approximately 300,000 visitors from the start of the Games.

(reuters, est)