There is a Trentino who, while waiting to count the highest number of medals that will be awarded by the Olympics (32%), is counting the years of healthy life. This is the strategy of Val di Fiemme, the first wellness community in Italy and the Alps.
Here the route to Milano Cortina 2026 does not just pass through the stadium and track, but rather takes a direction that starts from afar. Here the Olympics are not just a sport: they are a model of everyday longevity that aims to encompass the fields of health, economy and tourism. The Trentino Valley, overlooking the Dolomites, with the Cavalese in the center, home to the Extraordinary Communities, took up the challenge of placing communities and their quality of life at the center of local development no more than a year ago. And this is done with the aim of the Olympics – about sixty competitions will be held here – with the active participation of citizens ready to volunteer, but also of companies, the Italian excellence of which has maintained its production in the valley. Well-being as a collective good, a legacy to be built and maintained, where public health and environmental health go together in a kind of virtuous circle, as was reaffirmed at the Dolomiti Wellness Community Summit, created by Luigi Angelini to transform the valley into an exportable laboratory of quality of life.
Professor Luigi Fontana (University of Sydney) has launched an Olympic-style challenge: live to be 120 years old with 50 years of health. Not a provocation, but a concrete and revolutionary formula: bridging the growing gap between the length of our lives (lifespan) and the years we spend in health (healthspan). “Physical activity he said – that’s a daily remedy, not sporadic activity.” Then healthy nutrition to regulate stomach weight and metabolic mechanisms that trigger inflammation, insulin resistance and premature aging. 80% of cardiovascular diseases and 40% of tumors, he recalls, are preventable. Translated into local language, the true waxing cabin of the future is a lifestyle. As? By adding lives to years, and not years to lives and reversing the goal: now we aim for “chronic health”. To reinforce these principles, the figures put forward by Matteo Mazziotta (central director of Istat): quality of life can be measured and in this valley translates into low urban fragility, high social capital, environmental performance and a vibrant economy.
Data is not used as decoration, but as a democratic compass for far-sighted policies. The challenge is to attract young talent with a work environment that integrates quality of life and competitiveness. Therefore, innovation and continuous networking are the training disciplines in Trentino which is 95% made up of small businesses. In the valley, business is not the opposite of prosperity. Examples are the Felicetti pasta factory where pure mountain air and spring water produce the pasta sought after by the best chefs, or Fiemmetremila, something more and different from a simple wooden floor manufacturer. Convinced that indoor pollution can be five times greater than outdoor pollution (due to the glues and solvents used), they have studied methods and systems to bring (their) forest into the home.
In the future, there needs to be synergy that also involves institutions. Maurizio Fugatti, president of the Autonomous Province of Trento, underlined that from here (the first experiment in our country) began an additional pension for each newborn financed by public bodies. The message is clear: the health of citizens is not a cost, but rather territorial capital which, if measured, means that every euro invested in prevention can save 14 euros in health care costs. But prosperity becomes real if it belongs to everyone. With “Fiemme and Cembra, mountains without limits” the barriers move, destroying themselves: equipped vans, special e-bikes, off-road wheelchairs, side-by-side tandems, wheelchair skating aids, routes and rentals of which can be booked online. A project supported by the Presidency of the Council, the Ministry of Disabilities and the Provinces, developed together with SportAbili and Fiemme and Fassa Sport Inclusivo.
The result? In Val di Fiemme you can cycle, hike, ski, even wheelchair curling at the Palacurling di Cembra and wheelchair skating at the Cavalese ice stadium. Not an “aid for the disabled”, but a tool for exploring the mountains. The testing site is now near. However, with the Olympics coming up, it is clear that Val di Fiemme has been training for several years. Between Lago di Tesero (cross-country skiing/Paralympic biathlon) and Predazzo (jumping/combined), 21 Olympic and 39 Paralympic races. An effort that relies on a community of over 1000 volunteers: true renewable energy in the valley. In this connection, the Olympics is a format and welfare is the content.
Without this, content risks not being scalable; without anything else, the format becomes empty. Fiemme wants to show that you can do both: compete while guarding. Even the five circles at the entrance to the Predazzo tell a story of choice, of an Olympics that begins with leaving home. Every day.
