Life As A Volunteer At The Olympics

It is 11 a.m., and Bergen's sky is threatening rain as I send Ebba the link to start our interview. We haven't spoken properly in a while, just the occasional message here and there. It has been some time since we first met at a meeting of the association we are both part of: Bocconi Students for Sport Management. 

She answers with a smile: she is at the university park, in the sun, on one of those beautiful spring days Milan knows how to offer. She is Norwegian, from Oslo. She has been studying International Economics and Management at Bocconi for nearly two years. And she had the incredible fortune, and the determination, to take part as a volunteer in the XXV Winter Olympic Games of Milano Cortina 2026.

Applying was not a casual decision. Ebba is an active member of one of Bocconi’s main student sports associations, and the idea of working in the sports industry after graduating is something she has been seriously thinking about for a while. 

She explains that volunteering at the Olympics felt like a concrete opportunity to see that interesting world from the inside. “It is not very often that an event like this shows up in the city where you already live,” she says. “You don’t have to travel anywhere: it just lands on your doorstep.” 

On top of that, volunteering was already something familiar to her. She had done it before, and those experiences had shown her how rewarding it can be, both personally and socially. Once she put those things together, the choice started to feel almost obvious.

Her role was Event Service Volunteer at the press centre, located in CityLife, one of Milan’s most iconic modern districts. Her day-to-day tasks mainly involved supporting the press staff: helping people move around the venue, find their equipment and understand where they needed to be. Compared to other Olympic venues, it was a relatively calm assignment. 

Indeed, Ebba also spent one day at the ice hockey arena, and she remembers it with a certain honesty: “From the outside, I thought it was fun, because during breaks you could watch the games for free from the stands. But when I was there I realized it also meant standing outside in the cold for hours helping people at the ticket area. At the press centre, at least you got to stay warm inside.”

Being Norwegian at a Winter Olympics, of course, has its own special flavour. Ebba talks about it with visible amusement. The usual small talk, with questions like “where are you from?”, tends to sound a little different when your country is dominating the medal table. 

– People I was volunteering with would come up to me the morning after a Norwegian victory saying things like, ‘Klæbo, bravissimo!, she recalls. 

Some of the more viral moments from the Games also kept resurfacing in conversations with colleagues, becoming recurring jokes, she clearly enjoyed. But, beyond the jokes, she says there is something almost instinctive about a Norwegian feeling at home at a Winter Olympics. 

– I think it would feel very different to volunteer at a sporting event where Norway doesn’t qualify, or doesn’t do well. Here, it felt almost mandatory, as if a Norwegian should be part of the Winter Olympics at some point in their life.

One of the things that surprised her most was Italy’s engagement with the Games. Like many Norwegians, she admits, she had always thought of the Winter Olympics as something that mainly mattered to Norway and a handful of other northern countries.

Milan gave her a different impression. Italy performed strongly, the enthusiasm among locals was real, and the city itself felt more international than she had expected. 

– I remember being at a bar the evening of the ice hockey final surrounded by people in Canadian jerseys. You really feel it.

At the same time, she noticed that the Norwegian presence was more visible in the mountain venues than in Milan itself. When she made a day trip to Val di Fiemme to watch cross-country skiing, Norwegians were everywhere: unsurprisingly, given the country’s dominance in this discipline. 

In the city, the community felt smaller but close-knit, built mostly around fellow Bocconi students. – We went to ice hockey games together, sometimes with Swedish friends, and a few of us organised day trips to the mountain venues.  

Listening to her, I found myself thinking that it all sounded a bit what it used to feel like in Italy when the national team still qualified for the World Cup.

And it is the Val di Fiemme trip that gave her the story she tells with the most satisfaction. Wearing part of her Olympics uniform, a jacket and the shoes provided by Salomon to all the volunteers, she started wondering whether the outfit might got her somewhere she was not technically allowed to be. She approached the restricted area reserved for athletes and managed to get in. 

Once inside, she kept her composure and waited. The Norwegian athletes were taking their time: still on the podium, still doing interviews. The bronze medallist arrived first; she congratulated him and took a photo. Then Johannes Klæbo walked in, fresh off winning his first of six gold medal of the Games.

– I congratulated him and he thanked me, she says simply.

It was a brief exchange, but for a Norwegian student who had spent more than two weeks volunteering at those Games, it was exactly the kind of moment that made the whole experience feel real.

Back at the press centre, the atmosphere she describes is one of genuine and, in some ways, unexpected richness.

What made the experience particularly unique was the diversity of the people around her: retirees working alongside students, journalists from all over the world passing through every day, some volunteers that had already taken part in previous Olympic editions in other countries, almost treating it as a vocation. 

The experience also gave her something she had been looking for without fully realising it: a natural setting in which to practise her Italian. At Bocconi, she explains, friendships usually begin in English, and suggesting a switch to Italian halfway through can feel awkward.

At the Olympics, things happened more spontaneously. With several fellow volunteers, Italian became the default, partly because not everyone, especially some of the older participants, felt comfortable speaking English.

When I ask whether she would do it again, the answer is immediate. More than that, she says she could see herself not just volunteering in sport, but working in it professionally one day.

But before this, volunteering at the Formula 1 Grand Prix at Monza in September is already on her radar as a possible next step. And further down the line, maybe even a football World Cup.

If she had to reduce the experience to three words, Ebba says they would be international, rewarding and inspiring. The last one, she explains, is the most important: an event like this does not just stay with you. It pushes you towards something else, something more.

– I think that applies to everyone who watches, not just volunteers. It makes you want to do something, try something, be part of something.

Her advice to other students who would like to take part in a similar experience is straightforward: join an association. That is where she first heard about this opportunity, through Bocconi Students for Sport Management, and, more generally, that is where opportunities tend to circulate: in group chats, through shared interests, through people who are already looking in the same direction.

– Whether it’s sports, finance, design, whatever: associations are where you meet the people who will introduce you to things you would never find on your own.

Beyond her shifts at the press centre, Ebba made the most of the Games as a spectator too. She watched ice hockey, made her trip to Val di Fiemme, visited the Olympic flame installation in the city, and spent an evening at Casa Sweden, cheering for the Swedes in ice hockey, partly because she was genuinely cheering for them, and partly, she admits, because she is half Swedish.

Her family also came to visit Milan during the Olympics, and she got to share part of that experience with them.

Outside, Bergen is still grey. Ebba, still sitting in the park, is still enjoying the Milan sun. We say goodbye, and I close the laptop thinking that perhaps what will stay with her most is not a single medal, venue or meeting, but the feeling of having been part of something alive, brief and unforgettable. A sense of belonging to a moment, a city and an atmosphere that will not easily fade.